THE FURNACE 
_ Dan Poling 








_“And return it please; for I find 
that altho’ many of my friends are 
poor mathematicians, most of 
them are good book-keepers.” 


—Sir Walter Scott 


M0 arod 2%, Hoover 


























The person charging this material is re- 
sponsible for its return to the library from 
which it was withdrawn on or before the 
Latest Date stamped below. 


Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons 
for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from 
the University. 

To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 


JUN q 4 1685. 


L161—O-1096 


7 iy 
ee UN 
Ie i iF : 
eee 


hs 
a Vy 


ib it ee i 

7 ee iif Me, 

ene LI 
‘a 


f a 








uv 3 i 
LEN, 
; 


t) 





t ; } ey 








THE FURNACE 


BY 


DAN POLING 


NEW YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1925, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


THE FURNACE 
ney 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


JALASON 


g, Apr 43 M Hoover 


TO 
GENE 


My wife, who has great 
courage and high faith. 





THE FURNACE 





THE FURNACE 


CHAPTER if 


WAV res ienc homeward, the Aquitania steamed 
through the fading night. She trembled like a 
living soul, She seemed a sentient being. Behind her 
mighty breasts eight thousand men strained toward 
the dawn. 

About the great ship’s cleaving bow rushed up the 
phosphorescent glow and played like silver elves of 
welcome along her streaming sides; the gray fogs hung 
above the narrows as mists that gather over woman’s 
eyes when waiting days are done and shore lines 
stretched like mighty arms to clasp returning heroes to 
a nation’s breast. ‘ 

Three men stood together at the starboard rail and 
watched the morning come. Their intimate silence 
spoke the closeness of the ties that bound them. One 
of the three, a man of thirty-five, wore a chaplain’s 
cross upon his shoulder; his figure was tall, and his 
presence commanding; a scar ran through his right eye- 
brow across his temple and lost itself in his heavy, dark 
hair; there were lines of pain about his mouth, and a 
pallor on his cheeks that it would take more than eight 
days at sea to replace with the color of his old-time 
rugged health. 

7 


8 THE FURNACE 


At the chaplain’s right leaned a major,—a major of 
artillery at twenty-eight. Slender he was, and with a 
face that should have been set with laughing eyes, but 
there was a strange cynicism in the long gaze he turned 
upon the just appearing shore. His nervous fingers 
flipped a half-smoked cigarette into the sea, and with a _ 
quizzical expression about his finely-drawn mouth, he 
turned to the chaplain and was about to speak, when 
the third member of the early morning group, a colonel 
—a youthful, towering figure of a man—dropped a re- 
straining hand lightly upon his shoulder, while, with a 
slight inclination of his uncovered head he drew his 
companion’s attention to an intermittent light that had 
just come out of the sea,—the beacon of the anchored 
ship off Sandy Hook, 

A pregnant, utter stillness came upon the three young 
officers,—the overwhelming sense of home. A few 
hours later they were to hear the mighty shouts of their 
comrades lifted in delirious joy when the mayor’s com- | 
mittee, accompanied by a score of welcoming craft, 
bands playing, sirens screaming, colors waving, chil- 
dren singing and women weeping, came down the har- 
bor. With eyes filled and hearts overflowing, they 
were to rise to the heights of that ecstatic moment. 
But never were they to reach again that day the depths 
of emotion they plumbed together as they stood beside 
the rail and caught the message of the light that 
streamed across the gray of dawn. 

Softly, sung in the rich melodiousness of blended 
negro voices, came from below the decks the strains of 
“Suwannee River.” 


THE FURNACE 9 


“All dis world am sad and dreary, 
Ebrywhere I roam, 

Oh, darkies, how my heart grows weary,— 
Far from de old folks at home.” 


And then it was the colonel who broke the over- 
whelming silence by the rail. In tones that were like 
the deeper bells of a desert mission, with just a trace 
of the accent that to his companions spoke of his child- 
hood in Finland, he repeated: 


An alien and a stranger first I saw thy shores, 

Child of the bondage, born of bleeding lands; 

Here at thy gate I lay, with age-old, open sores, 

And thou, great Freedom, raised me on thy hands :— 
This is my debt. 


When the speaker had finished, he stood as one trans- 
figured. Unconsciously his mighty shoulders rose and 
fell to the rhythm of the throbbing engines of the ship; 
his great face, with its deep and wide-set eyes, his ample 
forehead, his mouth half-opened, and his cloven chin 
caught up the lifting shadows and kindled them from 
some hidden fire. 

Through that unending last night at sea, eight days 
out from Brest, Bruce Jayne, the chaplain, Haig Brant, 
the major, and Malcolm Frank, the colonel, had sat or 
stood or walked together. For them, as for practically 
all the others of those khaki-clad returning thousands, 
there had been no sleep. For the hour immediately pre- 
ceding their first glimpse of the Sandy Hook Light, 
they had paced the upper deck in earnest conversation. 
Their voices low-pitched, though intense, had spoken 
words that bared their souls. 


IO THE FURNACE 


Bruce Jayne was the junior secretary of a Foreign 
Missionary Board with headquarters in Philadelphia, 
in July, 1917, when he enlisted. He sailed for Liver- 
pool with the first ten thousand. On the trip across 
he met Lieutenant Brant, a young militiaman, who had 
been a cub reporter on the New York Universal, with 
some connections in Washington that had given him 
his “chance.”” Down in the hold with others of the 
Ist Division of the regular army was Sergeant Mal- 
colm Frank, a twenty-year-old helper from one of the 
great steel mills of an Ohio River valley that at night 
looks like the uncovered regions of the damned. : 

In ways past human understanding, by paths of fate, 
these three had been thrown and then joined together. 
The young lieutenant won his first citation when his 
organization, the 5th Field Artillery, went up for final 
training with the French. Under a barrage that cut 
off his battery, he broke through and reported at head- 
quarters, and then, though shell-shocked and slightly 
wounded, insisted upon returning to his men. A month 
later he wore a captain’s chevron, and after Cantigny, 
where though bleeding from a dozen shrapnel wounds 
he kept his guns advancing, they pinned a cross upon 
his breast and made him a major. 

The chaplain was the great heart of the 18th In- 
fantry, as tender as a woman, as hard as iron. His 
body, seasoned by the desert that had reared him, 
gloried in the extra bitterness of front-line duty. To 
him religion was a super-ministry that reached beyond 
all other healing. What others did he did, but where 
their manual stopped he felt himself ordained and 
called to yet go forward. It was at Seicheprey in Feb- 


THE FURNACE II 


ruary, 1918, that he leaped, or rather crawled, into fame 
and, better still, into the hearts of his regiment. 

One night of rain and sleet there came a dull explo- 
sion and a shriek of agony from a listening post that 
lay at the end of a shallow communicating trench which 
angled out from a portion of the most advanced lines 
held by the first combat division of the American army. 
Jayne, on his self-imposed rounds, heard the cry and 
crept out under the wire and through the mud to find 
his man. He came upon a half-dead boy lying in a pool 
of blood, with feet shattered by an enemy grenade. 
With deft fingers the chaplain applied first aid, and 
then, with the helpless chap upon his back, he started 
to return. Halfway in a great shell buried itself in 
the soft earth beneath rescuer and rescued, and blew 
-them apart. When Jayne recovered consciousness, he 
crept again to the side of the wounded soldier, and with 
infinite pain adjusted the limp burden and crawled on. 
Somehow he reached the wire, and strong hands drew 
him through, Over the still unconscious doughboy he 
crumpled with the caving walls of the trench. But 
when, a few minutes later, as the bearers lifted the 
lad to the stretcher, his eyes opened to recognize his 
savior, and his blue lips whispered, “Father, a prayer,” 
Jayne knelt in the mud, with blood blinding him, and 
prayed. That night left him the scar and gave him 
the everlasting devotion of doughboys and officers. Six 
weeks later he floundered through gas to provision one 
of Brant’s sore-pressed batteries, and now on his lungs 
were scars which though healed would bear watching. 

But of the three men who spent that long last night 
together, Malcolm Frank is the one who calls for our 


12 THE FURNACE 


longer attention. He was the youngest but one of a 
Finnish coal-miner’s seven children; the son of a 
father who had brought his family to the land of free- 
dom and opportunity in the high faith that burns so 
ardently in the breasts of the vast majority of immi- 
grants who are hurried in by the Statue of Liberty to 
the doubtful welcome of Ellis Island. As a lad Mal- 
colm had spent a pitifully short time in school, but he 
had made those few days count, and they had been sup- 
plemented by the home instruction of the well-read, 
hard-working father. 

Too young to remember clearly the flowered hills of 
his native land that wept beneath its ancient wrongs, 
Malcolm related all his childhood fancies—and a 
dreamer born he was—to the emerald mountains that 
rose behind the black collieries and smudged spires of 
the village where soon he learned the way to the 
“breaker.” Always, at his work and as he stumbled 
wearily home, he turned his eyes to the hills, and from 
them came his strength. True son of his father was 
he, and within the breast of that too early broken man 
lived the soul of an adventurer who in another time 
would have followed LaSalle or gone with Clark, down 
the trail of some new freedom. Even the black death 
of the mine, the long hours, the cramped labor, the 
foul air, the burrowing far back from the sun, could 
not tame the Finlander’s spirit. By the dim light of his 
mean home, for an hour that robbed him of sleep, he 
opened the book that recited America’s virtue and 
greatness; upon it he rested his gnarled hands in 
strange tenderness while he told of the faith of the | 
Pilgrims, the suffering of the heroes who followed 


THE FURNACE 13 


George Washington, the glory and martyrdom of 
Abraham Lincoln, and as he spoke, he pointed the way 
of world service and greatness America’s future would 
walk in. With weariness and poverty and hardness 
forgotten, he builded a shrine for Freedom and knelt 
with his children before it. 

Yes, true son of his father was Malcolm Frank, 
dreamer of dreams, but made of the stuff of vikings, 
and seasoned through generations of hardness. Not 
even the jeers of the boys to whom he was only an- 
other “hunky” could sour him, though hurt him they 
did,—deeply. He loved great America. He worshiped 
the image his father had conjured. He accepted the 
prophecy and joined his soul to the greater adventure 
with the ardor of youth and the faith of a devotee. 

To avail himself of wider educational advantages, 
Malcolm left the mine and his home at eighteen and 
went to Oldsburg, a mill-suburb of the citadel of steel. 
Here his size and strength (he was within an inch of 
his full height then, standing six feet in his stockings, 
and with sinews and muscles that rippled like quick- 
silver under the firm flesh of sound health) gave him 
a job in the great mill that elbowed back the hills and 
crowded into the course of the sickly stream that ran 
smoking and red through the foreign quarter of the 
town. 

From eleven to fifteen hours a day he worked, and 
at the long turn, eighteen and twenty-four. Seven 
days in the week he hurried from his lodgings, a long 
attic room shared with nine others,—always five sleep- 
ing and five waking,—so that while blankets might be 
filthy, beds were never cold. Ah, and it was a great 


14 THE FURNACE 


life to the mine-town breaker boy !—a life of blistering 
heat and stupendous loads, of mighty noises and con- 
suming exhaustion,—a life so elemental that, as in the 
great din of it, the Finnish lad released his soul and 
shouted the songs of his people’s untamed bondage, he 
came into a new heritage of self-confidence and power. — 
His rioting with strength and energy caused older men, 
men with bowed legs and crooked backs, legs that were 
as spotted from molten burns as a zebra is spotted from 
birth and whose drawn faces were baked to an oven- 
black,—caused these men whose youth, though not far 
behind them, was buried forever beneath pig iron and 
slag,—caused these hurrying, stumbling men bound 
for the scrap-heap, to shake their heads. 

But Malcolm Frank was living not by the standards 
of steel,—he was nourished by that which the workers 
about him knew not of. In his heart was a great joy, 
for was he not on the road to the larger life, and the 
freedom of which his father had so often spoken? In 
his first letter home he had written: 

“T began on the night shift at 5.30,—six hours and 
a half I shoveled, throwing and carrying bricks and 
cinders out of the bottom of the old furnace. It was 
hot! At twelve I ate my lunch, and at twelve-thirty I 
went back to the cinders with my shovel for three hours 
more, The noise was great. I worked right by the 
pneumatic shovel which was drilling slag. At five 
o'clock we all quit,—I had a full hour,—and it was fine 
to spend the time with my Latin. I am just beginning. 
The boss seems a decent fellow. He laughed and 
swore when he saw me, but did not order me to stop. 
I started for the house at six o’clock. Say, but I was 


THE FURNACE 15 


sore,—that will quickly pass, for I will harden. I 
washed and ate, and then went to bed; had thought to 
study for another hour, but fell asleep quickly and only 
awoke when the man on the day turn who shares my 
bunk rolled me out. It was 4 p.m. I jumped into my 
dirty clothes, gulped my supper, or breakfast or what- 
ever you care to call it. I have lost the run of day and 
night—got my pack of lunch and reported at 5.30— 
on time!” 

In a later letter Malcolm wrote, “I am a ‘third 
helper’ now. I help make what they call the back 
wall, which means taking a shovel and throwing heavy 
dolomite (which is a kind of limestone) across the 
blazing furnace to protect it for its next bath of hot 
steel. Every third helper makes the back wall on his 
own furnace and of his neighbor’s; sometimes I have 
made three or four a shift. 

“Let me describe it. I march by the door of the 
furnace, which is open in my face for just a minute; 
the heat is 180° at the point from which I throw the 
shovelful in, but I wear smoked goggles and can pro- 
tect my face with my arm as I throw. After making 
a back wall, a fellow has to rest for at least fifteen 
minutes. At first I tried to study, but found I could 
not concentrate. The second and first helpers work 
with ‘hook’ and ‘spoon’ to spread dolomite for the 
front wall and it is sure easy for a new man to get a 
bad burn when he goes up to the furnace to fill his 
spoon. 

“But, my father, when the front and back walls are 
both made, there is generally a long ‘spell,’ unless the 
next furnace needs attention. Sometimes I have four 


16 THE FURNACE 


and five hours to myself out of a fourteen-hour shift, 
but of course sometimes I must work hard all the 
time. Once I have had three such easy days, but then 
came a week which was quite terrible, when there 
seemed to be no rest at all, and I could hardly drag 
myself from work to bed. It was very discouraging, 
too, for it seemed that at the end I had forgotten all I 
had learned ir. those easy’ days, and the instructor at 
the schoo! where I recited shook his head. 

“After we have the front and back walls of the 
furnace made, I wheel mud to the tap-hole for lining 
on the spout. It takes an hour generally, but now I 
can do it in 40 minutes. It is 110° around the spout. 
While the furnace is being charged, ‘scrap’ in chunks 
from small pieces to a thousand pounds, falls from 
charging boxes, and these must be cleared away by 
the second and third helpers. 

“Then I fill large bags with coal to throw into the 
ladle at tap time. Believe me, it is easy to burn your 
face off! When tap time comes, I help to drill a “bad’ 
hole, and this takes all the stuff a fellow has, for I must 
shovel dolomite into a ladle of molten steel too. This 
is my hottest job,—the temperature is around 180°, but 
it takes only four or five minutes. Nearly every tap 
time leaves a fellow with four or five small burns on 
his face, neck, hands, or legs, and you must keep put- 
ting out little fires in your clothing, but it is not so bad, 
I think, as the heavy lifting parts of the furnace job, 
and I would rather be at this than have to work with 
the stove gang on the blast furnaces. 

“Tt takes six to ten men in a gang to keep the blast 
furnace stoves clean. These stoves are ovens for heating 


THE FURNACE 17 


the blast. They are as big as the blast furnace itself, and 
full of bricks that look something like your old checker- 
board. As the stove cools the gang with pick and 
shovel cleans out the hardened cinders in the combustion 
chambers. They must go right inside, and it takes 
them anywhere from ten minutes to an hour to finish. 
Before the fellows go in, they put on wooden sandals, 
a jacket which fits the neck’closely, a heavy cap with 
ear-flaps, and goggles. They look like Esquimaux, but 
it is not an Esquimau’s job, believe me!” 


CHAPTER: If 


N one of Malcolm’s letters to his father (and he had 
been very faithful in his writing) he said, “I’m be- 
ginning to believe that I’ll have a fierce time keeping 
up with my books,—but I am going to do it,—some- 
how!’ 

And do it he did, though in a way entirely unfore- 
seen. One morning a huge piece of scrap crashed down 
upon his leg and foot, smashing both. An hour later 
the company doctor had finished with him and he was 
lying quietly in a clean, white hospital cot. Four weeks 
it was before he could be about,—four weeks in which 
the great organization of which the Oldsburg mill was 
a part gave him every reasonable attention and care. 
The lad’s heart warmed within him, and there came a 
strong feeling of gratitude toward those he regarded 
now as generous benefactors, with a certain resentment 
against the men who had whispered bitter words in the 
long watches of those blazing nights. He remem- 
bered the safety devices and the playgrounds and the 
company houses—true, none of his associates lived in 
the houses, and they seemed forever removed from the 
sphere of the heavy-eyed common laborers, but they 
were part of the dream of his “forward march’’; they 
belonged to the height toward which he was striving, 
and, rested now, he felt again within him the surge of 
indomitable courage. 


Many things he could not understand,—he knew the 
18 


THE FURNACE Boh ats 


long hours were cruel,—he had suffered them; even his 
rioting strength had shriveled within him, his vigorous 
young mind had shrunken and grown listless. He 
granted the justice of the wage claims of his sullen as- 
sociates,—he knew that forty per cent of the payroll 
went to the skilled who numbered but thirty per cent 
of the workers, and one night in a crowded cellar where 
every man was sworn to secrecy, he had heard a quiet- 
voiced speaker declare that the annual earnings of 
seventy-two per cent of all workers in steel had been 
for years below the level set by government experts as 
the minimum of comfort-level for families of five. If 
his immediate associates were a fair sample of the 
whole, he knew the speaker was correct and he knew, 
too, that one half of those who made up the seventy- 
two per cent earned what they did only because they 
worked twelve hours a day and seven days a week. 

As to whether the company could afford to pay a 
higher wage or not, he did not know. Sometimes an 
uneasiness came upon him when he realized that body- 
destroying labor purchased for some less than the bare 
necessities of decency and comfort, while from that 
same labor others seemed to secure, beyond all necessi- 
ties, ease and luxury. He thought often of the young 
mother who rented the attic of the three-roomed house 
in which she lived to the ten men of whom he was one, 
—the squalor in which her babies played, the worn-out 
husband dead in exhausted sleep upon the unkempt bed. 

But he knew, too, the frailty of the poor,—their 
wastefulness, the ignorance with which they met the 
welfare workers of the mill,—how a bathtub was 
quickly turned into a coal-bin and a newly papered 


20 THE FURNACE 


wall used as a blackboard on which the father tried to 
figure out his weekly wage. 

Malcolm Frank was not an ordinary, common la- 
borer; through generations of poverty and oppression 
the line of which his family was a strain had kept it- 
self above the tide of discouragement and had refused 
to sink beneath the flood of degeneracy. Malcolm’s 
father and mother, coal miners and “‘hunkies” to the 
undiscriminating, were brave and resourceful souls. 
To their son they had given, not only clean blood, and 
the rudiments of an education, but a native mind ana- 
lytical as well as ambitious, so that while the young 
Finn, convalescing from his painful accident, laughed 
again at long hours and blinding heat, he resolved to 
get above the earning plane of bare existence, to be- 
come skilled among the skilled, and to emulate the few 
who had risen from the ranks to lead them. 

He could also not avoid questioning, “‘What of these 
others? Do they have what in a free land, what in 
America, belongs to them? Is theirs a man’s chance, a 
man’s fighting chance, to win what I shall reach?” And 
always the benefactors and welfare agencies of the 
great corporation came to his remembrance to reassure 
him. 

It was at the end of the fourth week after his leg 
and foot had been injured, and when he was just able 
to swing about on his crutches, that a representative 
from the superintendent’s office came to the hospital 
and interviewed him. The conversation lifted Mal- 
colm to the seventh heaven,—the company not only re- 
gretted the accident, but had noted with interest the 
spirit of the patient during the long convalescence; also 


THE FURNACE \ ME 


his superiors appreciated his studious habits, and wished 
him to know that for a chap of his apparent qualities 
the Bancroft Steel Company had a future. As soon as 
he was able, he was to report to the superintendent for 
assignment to a new and more attractive position. 

But Frank never reported. A week later he was dis- 
charged from the hospital as cured; his limb was still 
weak, but he had the comforting assurance that his re- 
covery would be complete, and that in another month 
he would scarcely remember the injury. When he said 
good-by to the doctors and nurses with whom he had 
become a great favorite, he had only one thing in mind, 
—his visit to the office of the mill superintendent. 

And then he met fate. As he swung down the 
street toward his lodgings, he came to the post-office, 
and there, on a V-shaped billboard in front of it, he 
was faced by a startling poster—a man in uniform 
confronted him, a man with piercing eye and out- 
stretched hand, beneath whose pointing finger were 
these words, in foot-high, flaming letters: 


S4OUR COUNTRY NEEDS VOD I 


Now, strange as it may seem, in so emotional a 
youth, Malcolm Frank had never suffered from an at- 
tack of military fever. Perhaps his father’s aversion 
to the man on horseback who had ridden down his 
native land was indirectly responsible for the disinter- 
ested attitude the boy had taken toward the great war 
which for nearly two years now had punished the na- 
tions of Europe. This, and the fact that the natural 
sympathies of his family were plunged into hopeless 
confusion, at the beginning of the struggle, by the 


22 THE FURNACE 


alignment of absolute monarchies,—Russia against 
Germany: Russia, the slave lord of Finland, with 
France and Belgium and free England had no doubt 
been responsible for his lack of vital interest. 

But that poster was an awakening shock; a heavier 
blow it struck him than the half-ton “scrap” that broke 
his leg. “Your Country Needs You.’ Hypnotized, 
his eyes fastened to the legend beneath the picture, and 
he stood trembling on the curb of the busy street. A 
voice aroused him: 

“Well, buddy,—what about it?” 

The speaker was a dapper, well-groomed sergeant of 
the marines. Quickly he had appraised the youth be- 
fore him, sensed the temporary character of his injury, 
and taken full account of his splendid physique. The 
keen young officer was not long in telling his story, 
and he told it well. 

“Sure, your country needs you,—Greasers overrun- 
ning Texas, spreading terror all along the border; 
short-handed in the Philippines,—not enough marines 
to teach the natives how to salute the flag,—and, man, 
a big war coming, coming sure as fate. We can’t for- 
get the Lusitania; we wouldn't, and the Huns won’t let 
us, but when we mix with that—ye gods! it will take 
the last man! They’ll come and get you later—better 
‘Do it now!” 

Malcolm scarcely heard the staccato voice of the 
sergeant. The poster, the hypnotic spell of that point- 
ing finger, and “Your Country Needs You,” still held 
him. Quickly he roused, shook himself, turned to the 
recruiting officer with a noncommittal smile and swung 
on, That immaculate and thoroughly-in-earnest ma- 


THE FURNACE 23 


rine flung after the retreating figure a snort of disgust, 
and quickly forgot the incident. 

But Malcolm did not forget. Straight on to his’ 
lodgings he hurried, with a new light in his eyes and a 
determination in his mind altogether different from the 
one with which he had started away from the hospital. 
Paying his bill for room and bed,—rather for half of 
the latter,—he said good-by to his haggard-eyed land- 
lady, and going to the bank that served the foreign 
element of the town, drew out his savings. The 
amount was not large, but to the young Finn it seemed 
so. He however made a quick mental calculation, and 
discovered that the twenty-five dollars a week he had 
received for six weeks while learning his job, with the 
ten-dollar a week advance that had come in his pay 
envelope for the balance of the time he had worked as 
a third helper, would look smaller to the head of a 
household than it did to him. But his heart warmed 
when he thought of what he could do now for his peo- 
ple,—his father, always his hero, and his mother, sad- 
eyed, with a strange tenderness in her coarse hands, 
and just a hint of youthful comeliness about her wind- 
hardened features. 

That he had come to a sudden and revolutionary 
change in his life plan did not at once occur to him. 
Rather it seemed that he was going forward in the 
course that had been set for him from the beginning. 
Later he was to come to himself, but for the moment 
he was in an exalted mood, and nothing mattered but 
his new, great resolution. 

He. took the first train for home. Four hours later 
he sat again at the simple table of his father with his 


24 THE FURNACE 


mother’s quiet smile upon him. Later in the evening he 
asked for permission to enlist in the regular army of the 
United States. The father listened with clouded brow 
to the eager words of his son. For weeks he had 
watched with growing anxiety the gathering war 
clouds; his sentiments, mixed and battling with each 
other at the beginning, had more and more turned to 
the Allies, until the first revolution in Russia finally es- 
tablished his sympathies. His experience was quite 
typical of the great body of the nation—a cross sec- 
tion of the slow-moving mind of the peace-loving re- 
public. 

But now that so unexpectedly, so abruptly, the call 
to arms was rung in his ears, and by his own son, he 
reacted with an aversion to the bloody thing that left 
him bitter and melancholy. So this it was, and worse 
it soon would be—out of the night of bondage, the 
Egypt of militarism, he had come across his Red Sea 
and Jordan, to the promised land of freedom and peace. 
‘Now this promised land was to become another armed 
camp,—yes, he could no longer hope for a better end- 
ing. 

When Malcolm had finished speaking the prema- 
turely old man—and never had he seemed so old to his 
son as he seemed that night—sat silently through long 
minutes, and then arose, lighted his bedroom candle, 
and without looking at the anxious boy said: 

“Yes, we will sleep now, and to-morrow night we 
will talk again.” 

For Malcolm the next twenty-four hours were trou- 
bled ones. He knew his father well enough to feel the 
intense regret with which his request had been re- 


THE FURNACE 2s 


ceived. The abrupt termination of the evening’s con- 
versation caused him anxiety. His decision was made 
—“His Country Needed Him,’—there could be no 
turning back. No longer the poster with its pointing 
finger held him; now the challenge was within him, pos- 
sessed his soul, and it was as though from his cradle he 
had been dedicated to some task of which this next step 
was the beginning. 

But he loved his father, and would rather die than 
wound him. More, he wanted his father, needed his 
father, in this great moment. If only with his father’s 
approbation he could go forward, he would be doubly 
strong. Again and again as, sleepless, he tossed by the 
side of his younger brother, he prayed that his father 
might understand. 

The next day he lost himself in the high hills, the 
castles of his childhood dreams. In the morning he did 
not see his father,—purposely he had been avoided, he 
knew, but at night the family met again at the table, and 
later the ardent youth and the sad gray man sat alone to- 
gether. It was the man now who spoke, and with a 
lucid calm that had come to him in the long hours of 
the mine. 

“Malcolm,” said he, “I understand,—you will go.” 

And then, as his son started to his feet, relief and 
joy upon his face, the father rose and breaking from 
the bonds of cramped and shortened muscles, towered 
to a height the boy had never known was his, and 
reaching out his arms, with infinite tenderness he cried: 

“Come, my son.” 

Another month it was before Malcolm was recov- 
ered sufficiently to be accepted by the examining physi- 


26 THE FURNACE ! 


cian. As soon as he was “fit” he enlisted. Almost im- 
mediately he was ordered to Fort Crockett at Galves- 
ton, where the joined the tst Division. His father 
went with him to the city where his real journey began. 
Their leave-taking was simple and unaffected. The 
senior felt the forebodings of impending great events; 
the boy was only eager to go forward. 

On the afternoon of that last free day Malcolm 
made his long-delayed visit to the superintendent’s of- 
fice. He was a fine figure of a man in his new uni- 
form; his presence even then carried conviction, and he 
came without delay before the superintendent himself. 
The successful director of a great enterprise smiled 
rather deprecatingly when Malcolm thanked him for 
the company’s consideration and kindness, and told him 
of the decision he had made that had so completely 
changed his plans. The smile was not lost upon the 
boy. He flushed and stiffened; then drew from the in- 
side pocket of his blouse a smaller copy of the poster 
that had captured him when he left the hospital. 
Spreading it on the desk before the superintendent, he 
said, in a voice that trembled with emotion: 

“Sir, that is why I am going.” 

The man for the moment lost the cynicism of his 
world of trade and caught the spirit of the unspoiled 
youth. His eye lighted from a half-dead fire as he 
read the words, “Your Country Needs You,” and he 
answered : 

“You have done well. Perhaps my son, too, and 
the rest of us will have to hear that call presently,’ and 
he smiled again, a different smile. “Come back a 
brigadier, and don’t forget there’ll be a job waiting.” 


; THE FURNACE 27 


Both the superintendent and the young recruit were 
to have reason to remember that apparently uneventful 
interview. It gave the man a sort of moral bath that 
left him with wholesome thoughts, refreshed and re- 
newed; it send the boy away with warmth in his heart 
toward the great corporation, and an even keener desire 
to be worthy of the generous interest taken in him, _ 

The next few months were eventful ones crowded 
with unnumbered new experiences. He suffered in 
silence, as a good soldier, the tortures that are meted 
out to the “rookie,” and the revilements that are heaped 
upon the awkward squad. He tasted the refinements 
of discipline, and he learned that a soldier must be first 
a machine. But all that came to him, he accepted seri- 
ously, perhaps too seriously, for a soldier’s life, in peace 
as well as in war, is hopeless unless seasoned with 
philosophic forgetfulness and humor. These ingredi- 
ents were mixed in later, however, and the soberness 
with which the new recruit, who spoke with just the 
hint of an accent, regarded every detail of his new life, 
gave him in weeks the finish and éclat of the service 
that are ordinarily acquired only after months or even 
years. 

His personal appearance and eager willingness made 
him a marked man from the beginning. His popu- 
larity was of the sort that mingles respect with confi- 
dence, and his great strength needed only one demon- 
stration to show a roughneck his place. As a corporal 
he went to Vera Cruz with Funston, and he sailed for 
England and France with the “first ten thousand,” a 
top sergeant. He would have been a commissioned 
officer six months earlier than he was, but for the fact 


28 THE FURNACE 


that it was unanimously agreed that he was too valua- 
ble to be promoted! Lieutenants and captains came 
from training camps, but a real “top sergeant” was a 
gift of God! 

At Cantigny, when Major Griffith was decapitated by 
a shell and a whole battalion was thrown into momen- 
tary confusion, it was Sergeant Frank who quieted 
things by sitting down upon a crumpled parapet and 
coolly cleaning his equipment. Frank it was who broke 
the stampede on the last night of February, 1918, when 
for the first time a concentrated gas attack mixed with 
liquid fire came down upon Company K, in the low 
ground to the right of battalion headquarters in from 
Beaumont. Covered with blood, soaked from knees 
to neck, he crawled out of his ruined dugout and un- 
aided captured the captain of the attacking Bavarians. 

His auburn head, with just a glint of gold, was al- 
ways fretful under its helmet—his only break with dis- 
cipline came when he threw his “tin hat’’ aside—and like 
a pillar of fire it became to the bedraggled, exhausted 
men in the midnight of the Argonne. But the croix-de- 
guerre and D.S.C. are citations not to be denied, and so 
it was that as a captain he led his men into position 
when for a second time the old “Fighting First’ 
marched through the sinister shadows in front of Toul, 
out toward Mt. Sec, and waited for the order that was 
to send them into the triumph of San Mihiel. 

From his captaincy he walked into a major’s com- 
mission before the guns unlimbered in front of Le 
Bans, and while back in old Base Hospital 455, fretting 
with a rifle bullet through his shoulder, that just missed 
his lungs, he was made a lieutenant-colonel. 


THE FURNACE 29 


Then came the Armistice! and then, on an afternoon, 
in front of the gray Fest Halle in Coblenz, his day of 
days. It was just before the Division fell in to cross 
_ the Rhine. Down upon the parade ground of kings 
and emperors mighty Ehrenbreitstein frowned. The 
frosted hills were set with diamonds as for a corona- 
tion. But no monarch came. The burnished though 
battered ranks of a youthful army that had marched by 
a “Long, long trail,” to deliver the soul of a great, free 
people from a bondage of silence, when, not to have 
spoken, would have been ignominy, stood at attention 
and waited for the Commander-in-chief. 

At high noon, surrounded by his personal staff, 
Pershing appeared. Always a soldier unsurpassed, and 
the finest military figure of the war, on this day of 
triumph, when the ancient pontoon bridge that spans 
the haughty river was to know for the first time the 
tread of a conqueror, he rode into the great hollow 
square like some lion-hearted chieftain of old. It was 
then, with the sun upon his face, crowning his head 
with flame, and with ten thousand comrades shouting 
his name, that Malcolm Frank had the Congressional 
Medal pinned upon his breast by the great general and 
received the commission that made him the youngest 
colonel of infantry in the service. 


CHAPTER WU 


A? has already been written, Chaplain Jayne and 

Haig Brant met on the transport en route to 
Europe, on the same transport which carried Malcolm 
Frank, a sergeant. Jayne and Brant became friends 
immediately; they differed widely, differed tempera- 
mentally. Jayne was a believer; profoundly he be- 
lieved,—believed in God and in men. Brant was an 
interrogation mark; if you believed, he was a courteous 
gentleman, but as for himself, he didn’t know, and his 
experiences in the newspaper office of a great city daily 
had caused him to question much of the unction of the 
church, and to doubt much of the surface integrity of 
society. Jayne was a wholesome and sane devotee. 
Brant was little short of a cynic,—and that at twenty- 
eight. 

The background of the two men was different. 
Jayne was the son of a missionary to the Indians of 
the Southwest; his childhood playmates had been the 
sons and daughters of Apaches ; his home the mountain- 
land where it breaks up into foothills and disputes with 
the fruitful desert of northern Arizona. He was a 
product of the vast open spaces and had listened to the 
voices that speak in the stillness when one stretches at 
night among the sage beneath the low-bending skies of 
the prairie. 

Brant was city born; his playground had been the 

30 


THE FURNACE St 


parks throttled by great buildings or crowded alleys. 
He had known from infancy the stern fight for bread 
and breath. His father struggled against unfair odds 
to give his wife and only child the comforts of a modest 
home, and, when Brant was ten, fell before a sudden 
onslaught of pneumonia. The young widow, frail and 
undernourished, but a heroine, refused to die until her 
son was at an age when he could help himself. Brant 
had reason for holding the memory of a sweet-faced 
woman as an idol in his heart, and the memory of her 
it was—her tears and smiles, her prayers and faith— 
that made him less than a hopeless cynic. 

But while Jayne and Brant were different, while they 
differed temperamentally, and in their manner of living 
and thinking, both were genuine, and so by the law of 
opposites they came together, and as two vastly differ- 
ent men of another time, ‘‘their souls clave unto each 
other.” 

Brant would rail out against the social inequality and 
injustice of the day, damn the political chicanery of 
statesmen who made of nations pawns to move upon 
their chessboards of selfish nationalism; curse the trans- 
parent-figured grafters, too frail to fight, and too fat 
with profits to care whether fighting ever ceased; turn 
his sarcasm upon religious leaders who justified the 
barbarism of war and worshiped God as some tribal 
deity, who protected people and gave them victory be- 
cause they had a thistle for their emblem, instead of a 
cactus, and then he would grow quiet under the unre- 
buking smile of his friend who, in one way or another, 
always managed to terminate the conversation and 
still its tempest with: 


32 THE FURNACE 


“Right you are, old stormer, but God’s in his heaven, 
and all will be right with the world.” 

There was one picture of the chaplain that Brant 
would carry to his last day. It was in the early spring 
of ’18, and just before the rst Division was hurried to 
Cantigny. For weeks the line had been comparatively 
inactive, and then one night the enemy let loose with 
everything, from three-inch to “Big Berthas” and from 
gas to shrapnel. Knowing that Jayne was quartered 
in an old barn by a battered church that was an inviting 
target, the lieutenant (it was just before his second 
promotion) hurried out of his quarters with the deter- 
mination to bring his friend back to the colonel’s bomb- 
proof. When he reached the pump-square of the shat- 
tered village, he saw flames licking the roof of the barn 
and heard the screams of broken men who were being 
carried down from the loft. 

As he leaped through the wide door he came upon a 
sight that would never again leave him. At the opening 
of the concentrated fire, and before men could move to 
safety, a ten-inch high-explosive had dropped through 
the sieve-like roof of the stable, killing six doughboys 
in their roll-ups and mangling five others. Going on 
through, it had killed three mules in the stalls below. 
Mules and men were so mingled that it was difficult to 
separate the fragments. Above a boy the chaplain 
knelt. He was shoeless and stripped to his waist, his 
helmet cracked (unconsciously he had put it on after 
a fragment of shell had smashed it), his face and chest 
bloody, and in his hands the unmarred hemispheres of 
a human brain—he was putting it back, restoring it 
to the open skull of the dead lad, who, by a queer freak 


THE FURNACE 33 


of the iron killer, had been left with only the one 
strange wound. 

Hearing Brant’s call, Jayne lifted his carmine, drip- 
ping face, and in a voice of utter anguish cried: “Great 
God, and may we all be damned if this is not the last 
war!’ Later, in the church, beneath a crucifix, and in 
front of what had been an altar, they put down the 
canvas-covered baskets, and there, in the midst of the 
noise and death, the Protestant chaplain offered his 
prayer: 

“Rest Thou their souls in peace. Comfort Thou the 
ones who bore them and brought them a priceless offer- 
ing to the altar of freedom, and save us from this hate. 
In Jesus’ name, whose heart we break.” 

Through it Brant waited, and then he led the now un- 
resisting chaplain, who had been himself only slightly 
wounded, but who was sobbing like a punished child, to 
the colonel’s dugout. In that day the two men found 
a new and deeper friendship. | 

The meeting between Chaplain Jayne and Sergeant 
Frank came just before the latter’s first overseas pro- 
motion. It occurred ina Y.M.C.A. canteen in a dugout 
of Rambecourt, presided over by as fine a chap as ever 
wore the red triangle, a young parson from Iowa 
named Hart. Jayne, making his rounds one day, had 
dropped in for a cup of hot drink and a few words of 
conversation—there was a fine understanding between 
the two—when suddenly a doughboy plunged headlong 
down the entrance, crashed through the double gas- 
curtains and against the legs of the astonished chaplain, 
who went over backwards, narrowly missing the huge 
can of boiling chocolate. The chaplain sprang to his 


34 THE FURNACE 


feet, mad as the occurrence seemed to fully justify, but 
the doughboy, a sergeant, lay quiet. 

He was slimy with clay,—later they learned that he 
had tramped four miles through sloughing trenches, 
in rain and snow, with gas pains in his chest, and forty 
days of front line weariness in his limbs, to carry a 
message to headquarters, which interrupted line service 
made necessary for somebody to bring back in person. 
He had reported, and was returning, when, looking for 
something to eat and drink, he collapsed. The sergeant 
was Malcolm Frank. A few minutes of rubbing and 
attention brought him to, and then, while he sat on 
an empty crate, Jayne plied him with chocolate while 
Hart went for an ambulance. Two weeks it was before 
he recovered sufficiently from his first touch of “mus- 
tard” to return to his outfit. 

The ambulance was long in coming, and the sergeant, 
whose strength returned quickly, soon became interested 
in his surroundings. In the far corner of the room 
which had been a wine-cellar, directly beneath the 
private chapel of an old chateau, was “Lizzie,” a much- 
battered talking-machine, chained to a table-leg by some 
wag who insisted that the army couldn’t afford to lose 
her. She sat in a jumble of venerable papers and 
cracked records. The sergeant’s eyes rested longingly 
upon her, and the chaplain, sensing his wish, stepped 
over, searched for a minute, and then put on a selection. 

There, beneath the ground, hard by German barbed 
wire, Alma Gluck sang, “Little Gray Home in the 
West.” Jayne had heard the song the night before he 
sailed from New York. For five thousand people who 
crowded into the Hippodrome to listen to the music 


THE FURNACE 35 


of a patriotic concert that brought together some of the 
supreme artists of the nation, Alma Gluck had sung the 
plaintive, tender melody, but she did not sing it then 
as she sang there beneath the ruined chapel, to the ac- 
companiment of bursting shells, for a homesick soldier 
who would not have gone home had the way been 
opened, and for a khaki-clad minister of God. 

When the song was finished, the sergeant wiped 
away the tears he did not try to hide, and smiled,—the 
smile that sealed his fate with Jayne—and then said, 
“Chaplain, did you ever hear the story of the Statue of 
Liberty?” and the chaplain, rising to the occasion, 
countered, “Which one?” The sergeant, bowing an 
acknowledgment, replied: 

“This one: A fellow was invalided home. Presently 
the transport came on by Sandy Hook, and through the 
Narrows, and there, standing up in the mists, was Miss 
Liberty, and she had a light in the window for him. 
He stood at attention and saluted and said, ‘Mighty 
glad to see you, madam,—mighty glad to see you; but 
if you ever see me again, you'll have to turn around!’ ” 

Then Hart came back, and with the chaplain, helped 
the sergeant up the stairs and into the car. That was 
the beginning of another abiding friendship and really 
of a triangular compact in brotherhood, which was to 
survive and strengthen through many fateful days, for 
that night Bruce Jayne told Lieutenant Brant the story, 
and before the auburn-haired sergeant left the hospital 
he was fast friend to the slender officer of artillery. 
And the relationship between the three, which at the first 
found small opportunity for development, came to have 
a unique significance,—preacher and worker and writer. 


36 THE FURNACE 


Malcolm Frank would have been a point of contact for 
Bruce Jayne and Haig Brant had one been needed; as 
it was, he became increasingly a good “‘conductor” fof 
both, and, at times (to change the figure), a shock- 
absorber ! 

All that the chaplain believed in, Malcolm accepted, 
and no less a prophet and dreamer was he. Even the 
mud of a trench became the tinted plaster of storied 
halls, when he waded by, and every hard road he 
tramped, the Via Crucis to the way of triumph. But 
he knew as well the unromantic and blasphemous back- 
ground of Brant’s near-cynicism. His heart warmed 
to hear the stern and searching words that the young 
officer hurled against the sham and hypocrisy of the 
times; its double thinking and dealing and living. He 
began to sense the danger of a war won and then per- 
haps lost,—lost in the scramble and duplicity of peace, 
its sacrifices squandered, its victories dissipated, its 
fruits scattered; the high principles that actuated its 
dying, crucified upon the cross of greed by its living, 
and eventually the vanquished serving as administrators 
for some of their too greedy conquerors. 

At the first the difference in rank served as a barrier 
between Brant and Frank and kept them from frequent 
or intimate associations. The chaplain suffered no 
such embarrassment. Later, as rapid promotion came 
to the young Finn, and especially when the war entered 
its final stages, the three men were more and more in 
each other’s company. 

Always at such times Malcolm was haunted by an 
elusive memory that insisted upon placing Chaplain 
Jayne somewhere in his earlier life, but that refused 


THE FURNACE 37 


to definitely locate him. His presence, the trick that he 
had of throwing up his head when he laughed, the 
richness of his voice,—all were strangely, though un- 
certainly, familiar. But at last his persistent search- 
ing back through the years was rewarded. 

It was at Montebaur, weeks after the Armistice,— 
out near the top of the old Coblenz bridgehead, and 
just a few days after Lieutenant-Colonel Malcolm 
Frank had been decorated by General Pershing, and 
handed his commission as colonel—that the final recog- 
nition came. The three officers, with the others who 
shared the young colonel’s billet, were spending an eve- 
ning celebrating their comrade’s well-earned promotion. 
In the course of the conversation, Major Brant turned 
with good-natured, though at times caustic, bantering 
upon the Chaplain. 

“Well,” said he, “what’s the big job for the chicken- 
eating clergy now? Baptisms are falling off since the 
Armistice was signed,—you’re too active a man to be 
satisfied with a soft job. I can’t quite ‘see you’ pushing 
door-bells in a respectable city parish—but then, you’ve 
earned a rest.’ 

The chaplain grinned, pulled himself out of his chair, 
and walked over to the window. For quite a time he 
stood looking down upon the dimly lighted street from 
which came sounds of a minor disturbance. Then 
suddenly he swung about and came over to the major. 

“No, Brant,” he said, “I’ve earned nothing,—nothing 
that I haven’t received. When I get back, if I’m 
honest, I’ll hand Uncle Samuel a statement endorsed 
‘Paid in full,’”’—he hesitated for the fraction of a 
second and then as though sensing the more serious un- 


38 THE FURNACE 


dercurrent of the evening, and as though accepting the 
unspoken invitation of the group that had waited for 
his reply, he concluded: | 

“Baptisms have fallen off, and a bunch of the bap- 
tized have fallen down since—work stopped, but you’ve 
diagnosed the case wrong. This is no time for my 
crowd to take a vacation. If your work is done, mine 
has just begun.” | 

But back came the major: “There you go,—regular 
preacher stuff now! You sound like a collar buttoned 
behind. J’d almost forgotten that you wore the brand.” 

The major for no apparent reason was going the 
limit, but the chaplain, though a bit grimly, was still 
smiling as he answered in a voice that had something 
of the quality of the staccato rip of a machine gun: 

“T’d almost rather have you call me ‘Hun’ than yell 
‘preacher’ at me like that. I have a notion your con- 
science is seasick to-night,—it generally is when you’re 
nasty ;” and the speaker dropped his hand affectionately 
on the shoulder of his friend. ‘“‘Well,’’ he concluded, 
“"f it’s the ‘penitent form’ you need, I’m willing to 
suffer until you get there.” 

The major laughed good-naturedly, and in a tone that 
had taken on a new note that had lost much of its 
banter, he replied, “Right you are, padre. I’m a ‘sin- 
sick’ soul to-night. Not because of my past, but be- 
cause of my future, or rather because my future is 
behind me.” He hesitated for an instant, and then 
concluded, “In the words of a certain gentleman of 
color, ‘I’se done gone bin whar I’se gwine.’ ” 

Chaplain Jayne threw back his head and joined the 
laughter that swept the little group of men in uniform. 


THE FURNACE 39 


Then he said, “Major, in the words of your patron 
saint, Henry George, ‘I’m for men, and I’m for you.’ ” 

He stopped suddenly; his face, but a moment before 
easy and relaxed, became grave, even stern. The group 
about him as they watched his expression change felt 
the subtle challenge of his mood. Then very quietly he 
said, “Haig, that’s your future,—men! We——’ but 
the sentence was never finished, for at this point the 
colonel leaped to his feet and in a voice of startled emo- 
tion cried: 

“Now I’ve got you, chaplain!” 

While his two friends had gone after each other, 
Malcolm Frank had remained an interested and then 
absorbed listener. Not that he seemed to be following 
them particularly, but his eyes were fixed on the face 
of the chaplain. His expression was at first that of a 
man who is searching for something that just escapes 
him, but an instant before he so abruptly ended the de- 
bate it had suddenly changed, and now, as he spoke, 
while the half dozen men about the table listened in 
amazement, his face was flushed and his eyes eager with 
light. 

“T’ve tried since that first day in the cellar at Rambe- 
court to place you, to recall something I could neither 
forget nor remember. But until you pulled that quota- 
tion of Henry George, I was utterly baffled. Chaplain,” 
and now the man’s voice was intense, “it was Jonesville 
in Ohio, the town of the ‘Fighting McCooks,’ on a 
Memorial Sunday, twelve years ago. You were the 
speaker—the youngest that Post ever had. There was 
a band from the coal town under the tipple. My father 
was the leader. A boy (he was twelve) brought you 


40 THE FURNACE 


a note in the morning,—do you remember? ‘You had 
trouble to read it, but it asked on behalf of some 
Finnish miners for the privilege of playing at the 
exercises, and when the man who was with you said, 
‘No,’ you smiled and said, “Yes,’ and they came. Down 
the street they marched from the church, at the head of 
the column, out to the graves in the grass and the 
flags on the hillside.” ) 

The chaplain’s face was a study as he listened, and, 
listening, he searched the face of the speaker, who went | 
on: 

“Do you remember your speech? The conclusion 
was not what the paper reported,—taken, I suppose, 
from your advance copy. Your eyes were upon the 
Finnish miners, only two of whom could understand 
you,—my father and the boy who brought you the 
note, and later marched with a flag in front of the 
band. No, you do not remember your words, but the 
boy could not forget. He hurried home repeating them, 
—hurried home to write them down. To-day he re- 
members them as Moslems remember their Koran. 
These were your words,—you were young, very young, 
and you were filled for the moment with a knowledge 
of the great mystery of life before you. These were 
your words,” and in a voice of rare and compelling 
eloquence Malcolm Frank repeated: 

““The nation for which these died who are remem- 
bered here, is for men,—not for kings and emperors, 
not for rich and poor, but for men,—men who love 
freedom and would possess it; who cherish democracy 
and would protect it; men ready with their votes, their 
service and, if need arises, with their lives, to pay the 


THE FURNACE 41 


price of liberty,—and then it seemed to me that you 
looked straight into my eyes—for I was the boy—as 
you concluded: ‘It is as plainly written as the Decalogue, 
that beneath the flag toward which the eyes of 
millions now bondaged and oppressed, turn as turns the 
morning flower toward the sun, shall burn out the 
ancient dross of despotism, shall be the melting of the 
nations and the blending of the peoples of the earth.’ 

“Bruce Jayne,” said the colonel quietly, ‘‘you are my 
spiritual father, for that day was born in me the soul 
my father in the flesh had watched and waited for.” 

In a spell the men had hung upon their host’s words. 
So held were they by the intensity of his presence and 
utterance that they had not noticed a sudden and grow- 
ing disturbance in a room at the far end of the hall 
of the commodious German house in which the colonel 
was billeted, but as the chaplain rose to eagerly acknowl- 
edge the recognition of Colonel Frank, a scream of 
utter agony and terror, a woman’s scream, cut through 
the emotion that held them, and sent them as one man 
catapulting into the hall. 


CHAPTER TY: 


HE colonel, already standing, was in the lead. 
His heavy shoulders smashed through the bolted 
door from beyond which came the cry, as though it 
were papier-maché. Then his eyes beheld a sight 
that sent him mad with rage. A young mother, the 
widow of a German soldier, lay helpless, senseless, in 
the crushing arms of a brute who wore the American 
uniform, and who bore her to the floor as Malcom’s 
hands closed upon him. With an oath the frenzied 
fellow turned upon his interrupter. Drunk he was,— 
mad drunk. In a flash he had whipped out his auto- 
matic. Just in time Brant struck it up from the 
colonel’s chest,—the bullet grooved Frank’s cheek and 
cut his ear. Stunned for an instant, the colonel re- 
leased his hold. The fiend aimed a kick at his su- 
perior’s groin and spat in his face. Then the mighty 
right arm of the iron-maker shot out from the hercu- 
lean shoulder, and the brain that had cleared as quickly 
as it clouded planted a sledge-like fist under the foam- 
smeared chin of the intruder. Across the room the 
crumpled body hurtled, through the curtains of the 
high-posted bed which crashed to the floor, and there, 
all bloody, the would-be rapist lay, tangled in lace 
and jumbled finery. 

The whole affair was over in a short minute. The 
still senseless young woman, her white shoulder and 
swollen throat covered with Brant’s cape, was carried 

42 


THE FURNACE > 43 


to the ground floor and into the room of her mother. 
Her half-dead, but rapidly sobering, assailant,—he had 
followed her home from the shop, and slinking after 
her into the hall had waited a favorable opportunity to 
invade the room she occupied with her child,—was 
handcuffed and thrown on a cot in the colonel’s quar- 
ters. There it was discovered that he was a sergeant, 
Johnson, of Frank’s old organization, a decent enough 
fellow when sober, a man with a record for courage, 
but one of the many who fell victims before the re- 
laxed discipline and slipping morale of the after-Armis- 
tice period. 

The chaplain dressed the colonel’s slight wound and 
then cleaned up the prisoner, who was now blubbering 
in a maudlin way. The faces of the comrades of that 
rudely disturbed hour of good fellowship were stern 
and set—a nasty task was before them. The drunken 
fool on the bed had completely covered the ground in 
his mad rush to a court-martial sentence of death, and 
these men about him had hoped that their business with 
killing was closed out. Brant was the first of the group 
to speak. 

“Chaplain,” said he, “don’t you think we’d better 
call on the victim?”—there was no false note in the 
way he said it. ‘She deserves at least the apology of 
a disgraced uniform. For one, I’m eager to make it, 
and now isn’t too soon to assure her that the indignity, 
in so far as that is possible for the army to do so, will 
be atoned for. And, Chaplain, the decision of the 
judges is in,—it is unanimous. You win—Il’m for 
men.” 

Bruce Jayne threw a restraining, understanding arm 


44 THE FURNACE 


of affection across the shoulder of the major and said, 
“Come on, old stormer.”’ But at the door the colonel 
stopped them. “Not now, unless I am presentable— 
this is my party.” And so three instead of two, guards- 
men of a new order, marched down the hall together. 

Their knock brought no immediate answer, but 
presently the door was opened slightly and the face of 
the mother, in questioning fear, appeared. With defer- 
ence Colonel Frank, who spoke German fluently, en- 
quired after the daughter and expressed the wish that 
with his companions he might speak to her for a mo- 
ment, even at some cost to her already overtaxed 
strength. 

His bandaged head carried reassurance, and after a 
hurried consultation behind the again closed door, it 
was reopened, and they were invited to enter. Propped 
against the pillows of a great bed reclined a beautiful 
woman. Close against one cheek she held the face of 
a wide-eyed little girl; the other was swollen and 
bruised. It was the chaplain now who took command 
of the situation. With the memory of his own be- 
loved and the lad who was a babe at her breast when he 
left them, he came close to the group, and, losing his 
fingers in the curls of the wondering child, he voiced the 
sorrow and shame of his associates. And then his 
voice broke as he told of the son and the brown-eyed 
mother who waited for him. 

As he talked, the eyes of the young widow filled, and 
when he had finished, in a voice of refinement and 
richness, she replied. Terrible had been the experi- 
ence—she had prayed for sudden death, and when she 


_— 


THE FURNACE 4s 


had swooned she thought that God had answered. And 
then her eyes flashed, and she cried: 

“Oh, the war,—cruel and worse, beastly and foul. No 
man it was who came upon me, but a brute war-born 
and drink-nursed. I have suffered,—he’’—and she 
whispered a name—“‘is out there in a grave I shall never 
see. But, sirs, you are kind. You have protected the 
widow and her orphan,” and, resting her eyes upon 
the colonel’s bandaged head, and with a woman’s intui- 
tion sensing what she had not seen, she went on, “and 
their God will reward you.” , 

She hesitated and then, raising herself against her 

pillows and lifting her hands to her flaming cheeks, 
she cried, “Oh, sirs, grant me this favor. I know the 
way of your stern justice, the end that awaits him. 
«But the anguish of blood is upon my heart and my 
child. Spare me, oh, spare me its stain on my hands.” 
Utterly exhausted, she sank panting into the pillows, 
and quietly the visitors withdrew. 

Brant was the last man out of the room. From the 
time he suggested the visit in Frank’s quarters until 
they returned to them, he did not speak, but through- 
out the interview his eyes had never left the young 
matron’s face, and like a memory from some treasure 
room of childhood, her voice remained in his ears. 

When the three men again faced their comrades, 
where the now thoroughly cowed sergeant lay waiting 
the beginning of the quick journey to the fateful end- 
ing he had no hope of evading, Colonel Frank said 
quietly, “Gentlemen, come into the next room.” 
Standing then where he could watch the shackled 


46 THE FURNACE 


soldier, but speaking in a voice that could not carry to 
him, he said: 

“T met this man first when he was a private, a red- 
headed doughboy from Maine. I was his sergeant. 
He was a good man; war and absinthe make a nasty 
mixture; he has a plate in his head, and a section of 
sheep-bone in his thigh, and when he hears, if he ever 
does, that he spat in my face, he will be ready to jump 
into the Rhine. He [and the colonel seemed to suffer 
momentary embarrassment] sets a good deal of store 
by me. It was at Mandras that I recall him first. He 
came back one night to the relief billets as nervous as 
Brant there’—the men relaxed into a smile—“and 
paced back and forth in front of the old ‘Y’ stove, like 
aman with a past. Finally he stopped in front of the 
bench where I was sitting, gulping ‘gold fish’ and crack- 
ers. Jerking off his tin hat, he said, ‘Say, I saw a 
Dutchman to-day,—saw him from here up [Frank 
indicated the portion of his anatomy from his chest to 
his hair] and you know I’m a pretty good shot. I 
didn’t see him again’—he hesitated for a moment and 
then concluded, ‘Sarg. I hope he isn’t in my fix,—lI 
hope he doesn’t have a wife anda kid.’ That’s Johnson 
who lies in there, not the brute who tried to ravish her 
and kill me. Gentlemen, I have talked with the woman: 
you are my guests; I ask you to leave this man with 
me. Beyond this I ask you until I release you—should 
I ever do so—to forget what you have heard and 
seen.” 

And so ended the evening. In the morning before 
reveille, a sergeant with a broken jaw was received at 
the hospital,—he had been picked up by the colonel’s 


THE FURNACE 47 


car, and it was pretty generally understood that he had 
been mixed up in some kind of a drunken brawl, but 
nothing more was heard of the matter, and two weeks 
later the patient, who had been most docile and ex- 
emplary, was discharged. He returned to his company. 

Had a child of two understood what she saw, she 
might have told of a letter that came into the hands 
of her mother from the hand of a man who wore 
plasters over a bruise on his cheek and a cut in his ear. 
Later Brant sent a safety razor to the colonel, accom- 
panied by a facetious note suggesting home shaving or 
a change in barbers,—the note was quite a hit at the 
officers’ mess. 

Two months later the three friends received their 
_ orders home. The orders came together, and together 
the three now inseparable friends started for Brest. 
It might be interesting to add that Brant was seen to 
hurry absent-mindedly into the colonel’s old billet after 
that officer’s final leave-taking, and a young matron in 
black, with a child in her arms, accompanied him to the 
door when he left. 

The days that followed until out of the harbor fog 
one early morning they ran into the clear-canopied open 
sea were uneventful. The passage across was com- 
monplace,—they were billeted in a “bridal suite’ on 
“A” deck and lived like lords. In the twin suite across 
the deck was a French diplomat and his immediate staff, 
bound for Washington “to help save the peace we 
thought we had won, but which Clemenceau and Lloyd 
George and Wilson and Orlando seem to be having a 
hard time to find,” as Brant expressed it. 

The conversation which immediately preceded the 





48 THE FURNACE 


early morning experience by the starboard rail, already 
referred to, proved to be a fateful one. The men had 
returned to their rooms after dinner, and for two hours 
had been busy with their equipment,—indications were 
that the ship would pass quarantine at seven and dock 
certainly before noon. Their belongings arranged for 
inspection and landing, they made themselves at ease 
about the spacious room, and for another hour were 
engaged in writing and reading. It was characteristic 
of the deep understanding between them that they were 
as companionable without words as with them. 

It was Bruce Jayne who changed the order of the 
night, by sitting down on the edge of the writing table 
where Brant was busy with his nervous pen, and saying, 
as he deftly lifted a half-burned cigarette from the 
major’s mouth, “Old stormer, when are you going to 
be reasonable with that?” 

There was just a hint of seriousness in his tone. 
Brant looked up and retorted: | 

“Ts this the beginning of your campaign for the 2oth 
amendment,—2oth, since the women have a full nelson 
and a head-lock on the roth?” 

The chaplain smiled and replied, “You're burning 
yourself up, and you know it—not that I’m interested 
in you!’”—and the speaker grinned affectionately at 
the man before him—‘‘but I want no burial services to 
interfere with my home-coming. But really,’ and the 
tone lost its banter, “‘you’ve too much in front of you, 
too much of glorious living, to keep on at this pace,” 
and then the major, springing to his feet, cried: 

“Well, what have I before me, and what have you? 
What’s next? Strange, isn’t it, we haven’t said a word 





THE FURNACE 49 


to each other about it since that night in Montebaur. 
Is the thing we are going to do now worth the candle? 
Hadn’t I better burn myself up,—quickly? A messed 
world it is, and it will be worse, terribly worse, before 
it gets better. Chaplain, I’m tired!’ 

Colonel Frank looked up from his book and waited 
expectantly for Jayne’s reply. It did not come quickly, 
but after a long minute, releasing a deep breath, Bruce 
Jayne said with conviction: 

“Only one thing I see clearly:—having given my 
life, I cannot take it back again. It seems strange, and 
a bit uncanny at times, but I cannot feel that it is mine 
now, any more than it would be mine had I left it out 
there where Bill Thomas and ‘Wick’ Sanders and the 
rest left theirs. That much is clear. I gave myself 
‘till death do us part,’ and beyond. I married my coun- 
try, and her cause—and her cause,’’—his voice trailed 
off wistfully. 

“T’m not a preacher any more. Some day I hope to 
be a minister. My old desk will be open to-morrow, 
and Miss Barkins, the finest secretary that ever tried to 
train a ‘rookie,’ will have a flower on the far left 
corner. But whether I will stay I do not know. All 
that is sure I have told you. I cannot take back my 
life, and I am waiting for the ‘Voice.’ ” 

Malcolm Frank had come forward quietly while 
Bruce Jayne spoke, and when he finished he pulled the 
chaplain from the table, squared him around, held him 
off with both hands at arm’s length, and said: 

“Man, I’m glad you said it. That’s what I’ve been 
trying to find; it has been toiling around in my mind 
looking for me, and I’ve been looking for it. Now 


50 THE FURNACE 


you've gotten us together. I’m going back to the mill 
—here’s a letter from the old superintendent, and 
another from President Branson,—he came up from 
the pit. They’re mighty decent; they give you faith 
in the future. Listen,’ he took two letters from his 
wallet and read from the letter of President Branson: 

“Superintendent Judson has already written you, but 
I would not care to have you return without a personal 
word from me. To say that we are proud of you is 
easy (Judson says that he told you to come back a 
brigadier,—well, we are not disappointed, colonel), 
but to say that we need you and wait for you is better. 
We don’t expect a colonel to juggle slag any more; 
we have more important business for him. A super- 
intendency that will relieve you of the technical details 
you have had no chance to become familiar with, but 
one that will give your capacity for leadership full 
opportunity, is standing at the front door of the Olds- 
burg office to shake hands with you.”’ | 

“Now that is decent, I say,’ Frank interposed, “but 
listen to this: 

““For the times of readjustment now immediately 
upon us, the corporation needs leaders who know and 
who have the confidence of the men, leaders the men 
will follow. For such leaders the corporation is ready 
to pay well, and to share with them the advantages and 
profits of a future that promises much.’ 

“Chaplain,” Frank concluded, as he folded the letter, 
“T don’t care for the compliments—much. ‘They are 
well spoken, but I do care for that big word, ‘opportu- 
nity’ and that other word ‘share.’ All I ask is ‘oppor- 
tunity’ and a ‘share.’ When I think of those belching 


THE FURNACE SI 


furnaces and broken men, I fairly ache to jump into the 
biggest game in the world,—the game of steel. I’m not 
waiting for the ‘Voice,’ I’ve heard it, and again I’m in 
your debt, Bruce Jayne, for you’ve just told me what 
it means to follow it.” 

The colonel’s face was radiant with the strength of 
elemental emotions as he concluded. Then, like a dis- 
cordant note in an otherwise perfect symphony, broke 
out Brant’s crisp, harsh voice. 

“Who said anything about broken men? [ didn’t 
hear it in the letter. ‘Opportunity,’ ‘share,’/—yes, and 
that’s good, but what?—leadership, power, dollars,— 
and that’s all. Perhaps it is enough—for some men, 
for me, but, Malcolm Frank,” and the major stood up 
and for the first time in his life, though it was not the 
last, assumed the role of a prophet: 

“Malcolm Frank, it is not enough for you. President 
Branson of the Bancroft Steel Company promises one 
thing, and you accept another. There will be a crash 
there some day and you and he will fall on opposite 
sides of the heap. But I’m glad the ‘Voice’ you two 
worthies talk so much about tells you to go and shake 
hands with that superintendency, because,’ and his 
words took on an unfamiliar softness, “you are not 
your own, and steel can’t buy you.” 

The words of Haig Brant were like a gas-shell 
dropped into the midst of a platoon and left his two 
companions standing in a sort of stupor of surprise. 
The chaplain recovered first, and to spare the colonel 
the embarrassment of replying said tersely: 

“Well, Stormer, what about yourself?” 

Brant was ready. “I’ve heard your blooming ‘Voice’ 


U. OF ILL. Lib, 


52 THE FURNACE 


too. I thought half an hour ago that I was sewed up, 
contracted for, my name entered on the pay-sheet,—but 
I wasn’t. Here’s a letter, Malcolm. Cut out the pre- 
amble and eat the berries in the last dish,” and Frank 
sead the last paragraph: 

“Your old position is filled acceptably, but we’re 
dusting a desk in the north-east corner and cleaning 
up a cuspidor for the Foreign Editor. Don’t be in a 
hurry, and when you come, bring along your own 
smokes ; no one here buys them wholesale. Yours, with 
unwritten words to burn, Dice E. Thompson, Managing 
Editor, the New York Universal.” 

The colonel looked up from the page enquiringly. 
Taking the letter from him the major continued: 

“Well, I felt pretty fussy over that, so good in fact 
that I blushed like a débutante, when I thought of show- 
ing it to you soul swatters, but I sure wanted you to 
see it. I dropped it casually on the table twice, hoping 
one of you would come down to earth long enough to 
read it, but each time the ‘dominie’ blindfolded himself 
before picking it up and then walked backwards when 
he handed it to me. Yes, that letter looked good until 
a little while ago when Jayne announced the first hymn. 
‘Foreign Editor,’ ye gods,—and a bunch of regular 
fellows they are,—western men, young men, Stanford 
and University of California. They have brains and 
courage and ideals. You remember what they did and 
risked in the garment-makers’ strike? But now you’ve 
gone and busted things!” 

The chaplain’s face had been a study while Brant was 
speaking, half jestingly, but with an undercurrent of 


THE FURNACE 53 


soberness that dominated what he said, and now as he 
hesitated, Bruce broke in with: 

“T’d be sorry, friend, if I felt that anything of mine, 
any uncertainty, had loosened the props under you. I 
can’t imagine a finer proposition than that. I know 
Dice Thompson. I’d be sorry to see you turn him 
down.” 

But Brant shook his head, and dropping altogether 
his bantering tone went on: 

“You haven’t knocked any props out from under me; 
you've helped me change them. Just now I am not 
quite in the clear as to why the change, but the change 
is clear.” He sat down and spreading out his legs and 
shoving his hands deep into his pockets continued, 
“There’s a man at 259 Fourth Avenue named Brainard 
Roberts, a dreamer and greatheart, with brains to match 
his heart, a guild socialist,—perhaps you would call him 
a radical because he believes that Jesus meant it when 
he said, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself, —Roberts 
runs a society that is a sort of social engineer, it investi- 
gates problems, tries to get at the reason for strikes and 
to find the causes of industrial troubles, to reveal a basis 
for fixing responsibility where conferences between 
employer and unemployed break down. He is a doctor 
of human welfare, and has grouped about him a few 
ardent souls who are willing to live, not by bread alone, 
although there have been times when I am inclined to 
think they would have been glad for bread alone. Well, 
here’s another letter. I didn’t care whether you saw 
this one or not. Roberts doesn’t have anything to say 
about my medals. He never got very enthusiastic over 


54 THE FURNACE 


my uniform, but, believe me, he did a lot for sound 
morale at home. Malcolm, read this letter, read it 
all,’ and the colonel read: 

“Dear Haig: Welcome home. We need you. I 
can’t say what the salary will be, but I'll share my 
smokes. Yours, Brainard.” 

Then Major Brant concluded, “And to-morrow I'll 
report to Roberts.” 

Quietly the three men faced each other for a moment, 
and then the colonel said: 

“‘Let’s walk,” and so it happened that after they had 
paced the deck or lounged in the chairs until near the 
dawn, they came to stand by the starboard rail as the 
Sandy Hook light rose out of the sea. 


CHAPTER V 


hace Aquitamia docked at eleven on the morning 
of March 21st, 1919. Eagerly Chaplain Jayne 
nurried ashore, having given his friends good-by on 
board. He counted on Faith and the boy being at the 
dock to meet him. How he had scanned the upturned 
faces on the pier as the ship warped in, searching for 
the slip of a woman, the radiant, brown-eyed girl he had 
married! The tragedy of war rolled from him, a ten- 
derness possessed him, inexpressible and pregnant with 
the holiest things of his being. He was eager and ex- 
pectant as a boy, trembling with gladness. It seemed 
that his heart would break through his breast, so wildly 
it pounded, and the months of his eternity of waiting 
were as a nightmare that has passed with awaking. 

But Faith was not at the landing. Instead, his sister 
Josephine, the baby “Jo” he had tumbled about on his 
summer vacations, a senior at Wellesley when he en- 
listed, swept by the tables of clerks and inspectors with 
an army of friends behind her, and, laughing and cry- 
ing, rushed, with a wide-eyed, half-tearful two-year-old, 
Bruce, Jr., into his arms. 

“Don’t worry, big fellow, she’s waiting,” were the 
first words that escaped her. He felt like a soul 
snatched from some hell when he heard them. “She 
sent Bruce, Jr., and me to bring you. She’s been ill,— 
wouldn’t let us write you. I ran down a few weeks 
ago for a rest and to—to look after the baby. Now 

55 


56 THE FURNACE 


her ‘cure’ has arrived. Oh, brother! it is good to have 
you!” and the girl wept with more than the joy of his 
coming. | 

He sensed the “something’”’ she had not spoken, the 
something he would not have her speak, that, please 
God (and his heart brought up the reserves of high 
courage), now need never be spoken. Then he felt the 
boy against his breast, and hugged him,—blood of his 
blood, soul of his soul,—and of hers. There were 
greetings from friends; the strong hands of men who 
stood close to the tasks he had served were upon him, 
and before he could escape with his immediate party in 
a last wild burst to the gates, he had been lined up with 
Frank and Brant for a picture that in the morning faced 
him under captions like these, “Heroes’ return,” “the 
famous blood brotherhood,” and ‘‘Colonel Frank, the 
youngest colonel of the war.” 

Malcolm Frank had found just an instant in which 
to introduce a gray-haired man. Of the three friends 
the colonel alone had expected no “‘welcome committee,” 
but now he said, “Chaplain, this is the gentleman I have 
told you about,—Superintendent Judson,” and his lips 
trembled slightly as he finished, “he came from Olds- 
burg to meet me,” and the superintendent, who wore a 
black band about his arm, said quietly, as he responded 
to the understanding grip of the chaplain, “I came to 
represent his father’—the rest he did not need to say. 

It seemed an interminable journey to Philadelphia. 
The lad, who had quickly forgotten his shyness, alone 
made bearable the agony of the unanticipated delay. 
To her brother’s insistent and searching questions, 
Josephine replied that Faith had been failing for 


THE FURNACE 57 


months; that he had scarcely sailed before it was neces- 
sary to wean the baby; that through the time of his 
absence she had fought with scarcely a well hour to re- 
gain her accustomed strength, to become her old self 
again; that she had kept her true condition a secret 
from them all until within six weeks, when she had 
been compelled to give up and go to a sanitarium in 
Germantown. 

“But,” whispered Jo, as she squeezed her brother’s 
hand and leaned toward him with eyes that tried hard to 
be utterly reassuring, “she’s better, oh, much better. 
She was singing last night, your song, Bruce. She 
never was lovelier, as she pleaded with the doctor— 
good old Dr. Williams has been wonderful, just won- 
derful!—to come over to-day. She said, ‘I just must 
go. He doesn’t know anything, and if I’m there, he'll 
never know.’ Those eyes-of hers and that dear smile 
just naturally broke us all up, but he shook his head 
and told her it couldn’t be; that you would blow him 
to Kingdom Come if anything happened. ‘You're bet- 
ter, worlds better, but we want you to be well, and 
this is no time to run risks,—not when the war is over,’ 
he said, and so she submitted and sent us. Now, 
don’t worry, big fellow, we'll drive right out ‘toot 
sweet’—that’s it, isn’t it!” 

Bruce had gazed unseeingly out of the window while 
his sister had spoken, a dull pain, a deep hunger, break- 
ing his heart. A desperate foreboding and an anguish 
of fear left him by turns chilled and feverish. Jo had 
purposely refrained, he was sure, from being explicit, 
but he knew. There came to him the picture of Faith’s 
mother, a figure in gold and white among the soft lights 


58 THE FURNACE 


of an old Southern plantation; she had faded and died 
like a rose of the autumn. 

But he shook himself roughly, and filling his lungs 
till they throbbed like turbines, he claimed her for 
health, claimed her for health and for life and for love. 
Like some caged god was his soul, so great his desire, 
so fretted and anguished his spirit. The boy, stirring 
uneasily in the tightly closed arms of his far-away 
father, broke the spell for a moment, and the war- 
weary soldier smiled deep into the brown eyes—her 
eyes—lifted wonderingly to him. 

“We'll see the little mother presently, lad; to-night, 
lad,” and he kissed him, ‘‘and she’ll come back with 
us soon, lad; and there'll be bags to open, and wonders 
to unpack: 


“‘Oh! the world is so full of a number of things, 
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.’ ” 


Jo gave her brother’s hand another squeeze, and 
then his hand closed over hers in a grip of the old, per- 
fect understanding, as he said, “Good little comrade, up 
to your old tricks, always ministering, always mother- 
ing,’ and his eyes were luminous. “God will pay 
you,—I can’t.” Jo only worshiped him with her eyes, 
and then reached out and took Junior. “Come, let’s 
watch for the horses,” she said, and, swinging her chair 
about, left him. He was grateful. 

On across Jersey, by the spires of Princeton, through 
the just leafing trees of the woodland, he rode, no longer 
alone. She seemed to be breathing just under his arm, 
her heart with his heart beating. Again he was lost 
with his dreams, Through their college courtship at 


THE FURNACE 59 


Oberlin where, up from the south and out of the west, 
they came to meet each other ;—by the path of perfect 
understanding that led across their short years together, 
he journeyed with lingering memory. He saw her 
crowned princess of song and queen of her class; he 
heard the call of her voice that came to his soul like 
the clear-throated bell of love’s vespers; he feasted his 
eyes on her virginal loveliness. Again he walked by 
her side in the June of their mating; he whispered the 
words of the troth they plighted and felt the breath of 
her hair on his forehead; her hands were reaching up 
to his temples, his arms were about her in their first 
long embrace, his lips were claiming the exquisite pain 
of their first lingering kiss. 

And then through the months of their waiting for 
him the new tenderness that took command of his woo- 
ing—for their courtship had never been ended. He 
heard her singing above her swift-flying needle; caught 
her at play with flimsy, small treasures, and covered her 
blushes with laughter and kisses. Ah! and that day— 
he had been half out of himself with foreboding, but 
how wonderful her faith and her courage! All that she 
had asked was his hand, and holding it firmly she had 
gone by the path of her travail, far down into the 
valley of the shadows. There, in life’s holy of holies, 
with heaven and death all about, they had battled to- 
gether, and he had drawn her back to life, bearing their 
son. His soul leaped as the heart of him shouted, “And 
back I shall draw her again.” 

Then he felt once more the pangs of their parting; 
the last evening and the morning of the last day; the 
touch of her dear hands on his shoulders as her fingers 


60 THE FURNACE 


caressed the cross of their service; her radiant, suffer- 
ing, exalted face as she sent him forth from her last 
wild and passionate embrace. Oh, dear God, how he 
had kept unsullied in the sacred inner chamber of his 
soul his vision of her, always of her, as she stood in 
the doorway with the babe in her arms and the sun 
on her face! And how he had waited for this day, 
always seeing her, longing for her, journeying back to 
her as he had left her, and now—but he turned again 
from the folly of his useless regret. 

Instinctively, unconsciously, his hand, as often it had 
during the trip across, reached for his wallet, and from 
it took Faith’s last letter reaching him in France. 
“Beloved,” he read, through the film on his sight, “you 
are homeward bound. Oh, how wonderful that at last 
I can write it, say it, feel it. Homeward, meward, 
usward, bound. Perhaps when your dear eyes follow 
the way of my pen on this page, you'll be waiting at 
Brest, just the ocean between us. Dear God, keep me 
sane with my joy! ‘Sonnie’ is just off to bed. I kissed 
his dimpled knees till he shouted, and then I placed his 
arms about my neck and said, ‘Now hug Mother for 
your soldier Daddy,’ and he held me so tight that I 
nearly swooned with the joy of him and of you, for he 
stood in your place to me, and the you of him, oh, my 
beloved, possessed me. You are coming! coming! 
I know you are coming. The ‘yes’ of my long suppli- 
cation is with me to-night. Back from your kingdom 
task,—oh, my king, you are coming! ... I’m wait- 
ing.” 

And when she wrote it she had been propped in her 
pillows. Never a hint of her weariness, nor a glimpse 


THE FURNACE 61 


of her bodily woe. Again and again he read the 
oft-read letter, then folded its wet pages and put it 
away. 

The little party hurried off the train at North Phila- 
delphia, not only to save time, but to avoid a possible 
second reception, as well, and in a swift car of a friend 
who had sensed the exact needs of the situation, and 
wired ahead from New York,. were rushed to the 
chaplain’s modest home. But for the moment it was 
not home to the returning husband,—only a way-point 
on the road to fer. As the eager machine turned into 
the familiar street and came along the gray retaining 
wall of the lawn, Bruce closed his eyes that he might 
have again a sense of her there in the doorway just 
as he left her. Then he opened them to catch the 
fringe of the grass in its first velvety green and follow 
it up to the flags that guarded the entrance—the old 
doorway that had captured the heart of his bride with 
its simple colonial dignity that suggested the great white 
pillars of the mansion-house that cradled her. 

But what is it the old door frames like a picture of 
gold in the sunset? Does he live? ‘She is standing 
under its whiteness, the glory of light half blinding 
her,—a figure of infinite welcome. He reached her 
and clasped her, folded her into his bosom, lifted 
her with love’s omniscient tenderness, and bore her to 
the great chair that she had christened, “dear barque of 
our honeymoon voyage.” Then he knelt with his head 
on her knees, his arms yet about her, her fingers lost in 
his hair, her lips whispering, ‘““Bruce, my beloved. O 
God, thou art good,—I thank thee.” 

Later in the evening Bruce held Faith close against 


62 THE FURNACE 


his heart, while the tender old physician, who had at 
last relented enough to bring her in for the homecom- 
ing, drove her back to the hospital. She had said, “But, 
doctor, it will hurt me worse.if I stay. I’ve been good. 
It nearly broke my heart, but I listened, and gave up 
New York. Now I must be there when he comes. I 
simply must. It will cure me—flease!”’ And so he 
carried her down to his car, lifted her in to the arms of 
the nurse, tucked the robes close about her, and drove 
her to that wee, dearest hotse in the world. 

The words that they whispered to each other on the 
return that evening are not for our ears; not even 
Bruce, Jr., was there to hear them. Jo took him out 
of the arms of his father, away from the lingering lips 
of his mother, who covered his neck with her kisses, 
and put him early to bed. Then she waited until her 
brother’s step sounded on the threshold. When, a 
minute later, he entered, no one was in sight. He stood 
a moment before the old chair, caressing it with his 
hands ; then went to his room. Near a half-open window 
was the crib of his son. He knelt by its side; long he 
knelt ; then arose and retired. 

The next few days were to Bruce Jayne days of 
mingled ecstasy and torture. When he was with Faith 
he was utterly happy. So radiant and convincing was 
her faith he could not doubt. She nestled like a weary 
child in his throbbing arms. Sometimes she spoke, 
sometimes she sang for him a fragment of his song: 


“Oh, promise me that some day you and I 

Will take our love together to some sky, 

Where we can be alone and faith renew, 

And find the hollows where those flowers grew,— 


THE FURNACE 63 


The first sweet violets of early spring, 

That come in whispers, thrill us both, and sing 
Of love unspeakable, that is to be— 

Oh, promise me, oh, promise me.” 


Often she just rested while she loved him with her 
eyes. 

When he was away, nothing really mattered, and 
nothing reassured him. The very atmosphere of the 
office and the forced attempt at naturalness on the part 
of his friends was maddening. He was conscious of 
their solicitude and resented their pity. Even the boy 
irritated him. 

Then one evening Faith took his face between her 
hands and said, “Man of my heart, you are worried, 
worried terribly,—about me,—and you mustn't.” She 
silenced him before he could speak. “You hurt me. 
I’m getting better, and I will be well. You must,—oh, 
Bruce, you must be streng,—for Sonnie and for me, 
and—for men. You are my life. I live in you and 
will live, and,” she whispered, “there is no death.” 

It was his night of life’s supreme anguish. No other 
night, not even when her spirit took the wings of the 
morning and left him with her cold and marble beauty, 
held for him the torture of those hours when he read in 
her face the end of his world. On the last day she 
roused for a moment and called for the boy. She ca- 
ressed him, and then drew the head of her husband 
down to her pillow and whispered the words of their 
song, and then, lingering long on his name, “Bruce, my 
beloved, hold my hand,—till He meets me.”’ 

The city opened its heart and mourned with the man 
who had escaped death in France to meet worse than 


64 THE FURNACE 


death at home. A great paper, under the caption, the 
title of Joaquin Miller’s immortal poem, “The Greatest 
Battle,” wrote: 

“Bruce Jayne’s Faith died that the nation might not 
perish. As truly as any man who sleeps beneath the 
poppies that blow on Flanders’ Fields, she went to war; 
she made the supreme sacrifice; she gave herself to the 
last full measure of devotion. She becomes the in- 
carnation of all the wives and mothers who kept the 
lonely watches of the night above the crib of babyhood; 
who drew from bleeding hearts the hope of life at 
home; who kindled and rekindled in the souls of men 
the divine fires of patriotism; who sent their sons and 
loved ones courageous down to meet the battle’s hard- 
ness, and on to meet the victor’s peace.” 


“The greatest battle that ever was fought, 
Shall I tell you where and when? 
On the maps of the world you will find it not,— 
’Twas fought by the mothers of men.” 


One of the first messages that came to the house of 
sorrow read, “Faith Jayne,—killed in action. We are 
standing by.” It was signed ‘Malcolm and Haig,” and 
on the day when they bore her out to Lone Fir Cemetery 
and tucked her under the evergreen sod, Bruce saw 
Malcolm and Haig standing with streaming eyes,—at 
attention. 


CHAPTER VI 


HE weeks that followed were unending agony. 
Only the boy and her words,—her words which 
were the orders of his “high command,’’—saved him 
from shipwreck. Like bells they rang in his ears. “You 
must be strong for Sonnie and me, and for men,” and 
“T live in you and will live.’ Mechanically he went 
back and forth between his old office and the house of 
great emptiness; always Bruce, Jr., was waiting at the 
door, until one evening his father turned to Jo as they 
sat at the table and suggested with unmistakable 
pathos, ‘Perhaps the lad had better not stand in—the 
draft.”’ She understood, and from that time on, the 
small fellow came rushing into the hall with his glad 
shout, to be tossed in his father’s hungry arms after 
the white door had closed over its empty threshold. 

Jo’s heart was breaking with grief for him. She had 
the tact of a woman, mature and experienced. When 
he came into her presence he found a strange peace. 
She said little, but she stood at his right hand like an 
angel of comfort. 

One evening, two months after they had laid Faith 
away,—months in which Bruce had shouldered his 
tasks and carried the routine of his office with his old- 
time efficiency, but with none of his old-time enthusi- 
asm,—he came home with grim determination written 
deep in his face. He had his bed-time story for Sonnie, 


and an extra zest he put into it, but when the lad was 
65 


66 THE FURNACE 


snugly stowed away, the man stepped out into the liv- 
ing-room, squared his shoulders, and called, “Jo, dear, 
come in and sit down.” } 

The girl came and dropped into a chair, under the 
eyes of her brother, who stood towering above her as 
he talked. “I’m going away,—for a week—New York 
and the West—not far. I'll be back soon; don’t 
worry. I’ll be back and somehow I know that when I 
come I’ll be different. I’ve spent time enough in ‘quit- 
ting.’ She wouldn’t be proud of me now. Tell ‘Son- 
nie’ to save up for a long story.’’ He stooped and 
kissed her, and then hurried into his room to pack his 
bag. When he came out Jo put her arms about his 
neck and said quietly, “I’m glad you’re going, big fel- 
low; don’t worry. You'll find it. Sonnie and I will 
be happy and waiting.” 

- At ten o’clock that night, in response to a wire, Haig 
Brant met Bruce at the Pennsylvania Station in New 
York City. It was their first meeting since the day of 
the funeral. Haig looked at his friend enquiringly, 
and Bruce answered, “Home, James.” A quick run 
in a taxi brought them to Brant’s apartments at the 
University Club. Making themselves at ease, they 
faced each other, and Brant waited. His friend began: 

“T’m leaving in the morning for Ohio,—going out 
to see Beckwith at Oberlin. I need a father confessor. 
He can hear a man through without blinking or inter- 
rupting or patronizing; and he knows life—has lived 
and suffered. I’ve told you how he helped me to find 
myself at a student conference on the Bay of Monterey, 
years ago, when I was a kid freshman in a Pacific 
Coast prep school. I’ve needed my father these days, 


THE FURNACE 67 


and my mother, but they’re gone, so I’m taking the 
‘Clevelander’ out to-morrow.” 

He stopped, but Haig waited. Bruce continued: “TI 
just wanted to see you and tell you I’m not quitting; 
that things stand as they did; that I’m waiting for the 
‘job’—looking for it. I’m going to resign because the 
old task—and a great one it is—none greater—is not 
mine any more. And you know, Haig, there is the rea- 
son for much of the failure in life and much more of 
the indifferent, half-success,—men doing things, fine 
things, perhaps, that don’t call them, challenge them, 
command them, things that are not theirs, and that 
never can possess them fully. So few of us ever ‘get 
away —we are only putterers, our souls are never re- 
leased. I remember a negro elevator boy in Phila- 
delphia ; he was a graduate of Wilberforce College, bril- 
liant and ambitious,—and pathetic. One day I stepped 
into his car and my eye was caught by a card that was 
stuck into the lattice just above his control. There was 
a verse on it,—one of Guest’s, I believe, “He fell in love 
with his job.’ I couldn’t get the thing off my mind,— 
small chance that chap had, but he knew the philosophy, 
and he was game to the core. 

“For days after I began to come to myself, I kept 
saying, ‘Fall in love with your job,’ and when I 
couldn't, I blamed myself, until yesterday morning 
when it seemed that the little woman was very near, I 
discovered that the old job wasn’t mine any more. And 
so I’m going out to see Beckwith, and I think that when 
I return, I'll have something to fall in love with. I 
haven't gotten down to the bottom of things yet, but 
it’s something like this—out there we learned the 


68 THE FURNACE 


waste and the folly of a divided command,—we were 
defeated until we found unity. Right now the church 
is hurrying to forget that lesson. Each little-group is 
tempted to turn again to its small task, forgetting the 
great, common program of all. 

“You remember Jim Sterling ?—a chaplain with the 
42nd Division, the son of a bishop? Well, I had a 
letter from him saying that they had tried to send him 
to a church in a small town where another congrega- 
tion had passed through a holy war and divided. As 
he expressed it, “They sent me to build on the wreckage, 
capitalizing my wound to do it.’ He refused to go and 
is in the real-estate business in Scranton. ‘Better, far 
better,’ he says, “to divide and sub-divide lots than to 
serve in a selfish, divided church.’ Brant, I think that 
T can show him that he’s wrong, as wrong as the church 
he despised. But the tragedy he refused to be a party 
to must be faced. Somehow a man who has seen the 
stripped soul of a dying world’s need must register 
against this murderous crossfire of churches that 
threatens the Kingdom with disaster.” 

As Bruce had gone on, his eyes had more and more 
lighted from hidden fires; he had risen and was walk- 
ing back and forth, flinging up his dark head with the 
old familiar gesture of spiritual authority that his 
friends knew so well. Haig smoked on meditatively 
and inwardly rejoicing :—he had been anxious, deeply 
concerned. The blow that Jayne had received was so 
appalling that men close to him entertained grave fears 
for his future. It was a relief beyond words to know 
that he had ‘‘come back” and was going on. 

But when Brant spoke there was not an inflection to 


THE FURNACE 69 


betray him,—he was the old half-cynical questioner, 
and thus did he reward the confidence of his visitor. 
Bruce remembered afterward the comfort there was in 
his familiar gesture of doubt: 

“And so you still cling to the old ‘organization,’ ” he 
began, “‘all shot to pieces and with ‘replacement men’ 
deserting for cause? Of course I see there’s a chance 
for you since discipline is relaxed enough to allow you 
to change ‘outfits.’ Well, luck to you, luck to you. I 
don’t get the details of what you are saying, but,’’ and 
he stood now under the eyes of his comrade, upon 
whose shoulders he placed his hands, and he spoke 
slowly, “I get you and I’m ready to live again myself, 
now that I know you’re back. I don’t understand these 
—judgments, dispensations, or whatever you call them. 
I was ready to damn God when He allowed it to hap- 
pen, but, Bruce, that day by the grave I couldn’t have 
damned anything, and,” his lips twitched, but he went 
on, ‘‘a verse that my mother taught me—before I lost 
my soul’ (he put in brusquely to steady himself), 
“came back to me. 


“¢They pass from work to greater work; 
They rest before the noon. 
Oh, God is very good to them; 
They do not die too soon.’ ” 


Bruce looked long into the eyes of his friend, so 
deep and full of surprises, and then said, ‘““That’s great, 
old stormer.” 

Less than forty-eight hours later Chaplain Jayne 
knocked on the door of Dr. Beckwith’s office in Coun- 
cil Hall, Oberlin. When the door swung open, a little 


70 THE FURNACE 


man looked up at him in quiet surprise, and then, with 
the sure memory that was the unending wonder as well 
as joy of all who knew him, said, “Well, Bruce Jayne, 
come in.’ Thus Jayne came, as hundreds of others 
had come, to that great heart and generous mind that 
knew books well and his God better. 

When an hour had passed, the Dean arose and said, 
“Bruce, I think you’re ready to walk. Come back in 
an hour, and we'll go to dinner,” and out under the 
trees of the campus Bruce went. At first he had no 
objective. He wandered aimlessly to and fro, by build- 
ings that held sacred associations, but without seeing 
them. Eventually he found himself at the edge of the 
town and then he remembered the day that Faith and 
he had first walked that way. Like rushing waters the 
flood of memory returned; now every step became a 
whisper of those times when their love began, and each 
well-remembered spot a snatch from her song. 

But there was no bitterness, no vain regret, and as 
he came again to the campus he walked with the step 
of a man who has found peace. It was dusk; his hour 
was almost up, but before he reéntered Council Hall, 
he turned his steps to the arch, that shrine of Oberlin 
which rises like a pledge to God in memory of brave 
men and women slain in the Boxer uprising. He read 
the names again,—heroes of his faith and hers,— 
Horace Pitkin and the rest; names of deathless glory 
chiseled deep into the shining stone. Then he stepped 
back to catch the challenge of the keystone of the arch. 
With uncovered head he stood where once they stood 
together, where, on the evening of their Commence- 
ment Day, she whispered with the softness of some far- 


THE FURNACE 71 


borne song of angels, “The blood of martyrs is the 
seed of the church.” And as now he returned to that 
altar he was not alone. So real became her presence 
that unconsciously he reached out to draw her to him. 
Then, half waiting for her rich voice to speak again, 
he read, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
church.” 

The midnight train out of Cleveland landed him in 
the city early in the morning, and two hours later 
he was ushered into the office of Superintendent Judson 
of the Oldsburg Mills of the Bancroft Steel Company. 
That official’s greeting was cordial in the extreme. 

“Glad to see you. We've thought of youa lot. The 
colonel will be more than glad—he’s in the mill just 
now, but will be here very shortly, and I’m rather 
happy to have you alone for a few minutes. You see 
the colonel is a worshiper of yours, and you'll be de- 
lighted to know that he is making good with us in a big 
way. He is learning the business from the ground up, 
and I’m inclined to think that some of the rest of us 
see our finish already.” He laughed and went on, “The 
colonel is a born leader, and one who carries the confi- 
dence of all who are associated with him. The men like 
him and trust him. Chaplain, in a labor trouble here, 
I prophesy that he will be worth his weight in gold to 
the corporation.” The speaker’s brow clouded. “I’m 
afraid we are due for some unpleasantness; you know 
of course that this is a closed shop; we have nothing to 
do with the outside labor leader who stirs up most of 
the trouble in industry. We deal with our employees 
man to man, and you will find that for generous treat- 
ment the corporation and the Bancroft Steel Company 


72 THE FURNACE 


are always a little ahead of their competitors. But there 
are signs about that I don’t like, and before snow flies 
we may head into trouble.” 

The superintendent was just fairly started when 
Malcolm came hurrying in and with a shout of un- 
mistakable satisfaction greeted his friend.  Instinc- 
tively he knew that the tide had turned for Bruce; that 
his old comrade was again master of himself. : 

After their first greetings Malcolm turned to his su- 
perior and said, “Superintendent, have you told the 
Chaplain of my good fortune that you are responsible 
for? Does he know that I’m living with you, and that 
he can give me a real visit without running any board- 
ing house risks?” 

“No,” replied Mr. Judson, “I didn’t get around to 
that. You got back too soon, but,” turning to Bruce, 
“we two men have a great house full of rooms, and 
you can have ee choice to-night and whenever you 

come this way.” 

And so that night the two friends, for the first time 
since they hurried down the gang-plank of the Aqui- 
tania, roomed together. They spent the early evening 
with Mr. Judson, and Bruce Jayne came to feel an in- 
creasing respect for the well-poised, dynamic man of 
affairs. 

When finally they excused themselves and returned 
to their room, Bruce turned to Frank and said, ‘“He’s 
a fine man—lI’m delighted with him. I wish that the 
soft-handed parlor socialists who curse capitalists gen- 
erally and steel employers particularly could meet him. 
You're lucky to be with him, and doubly fortunate to 
live in his house.” 


THE FURNACE 73 


“Yes,” Malcolm replied, “he is a fine man,—as com- 
petent an executive as ever directed a great enterprise, 
and with the soul of a gentleman. He has taken me 
and made me as his son—that’s what he’s done. He 
says little about the boy who went to France—and 
stayed. I fear the lad wasn’t worth much till the war 
came along and gave him a chance to die like a man. 
But he was all that the Superintendent had. Now he 
has forgotten the chap’s weakness and cherishes a 
heroic memory that he helps keep alive by fathering 
me.” He looked contentedly about the well-furnished 
chamber, and went on, “Pretty fine for a ‘hunky’— 
I’m not worth it, but I’m set on letting him know how 
much I appreciate his confidence. The opportunity is 
a great one,—I can’t tell you how big it is. I run up 
against difficulties that stop me sometimes and face 
problems that make me afraid, but I am glad that I 
came.” ‘The man’s voice took on a tone of deep con- 
viction as he finished, and he turned to Bruce ex- 
pectantly. 

“How is it with you?’ he queried, and the very 
question implied the confidence that he felt. Bruce sat 
for a moment thinking deeply, and then replied: 

“All right, old man, all right. I have come through 
another Argonne and the wound is deeper than this,” 
he touched the pink groove on his temple, “but I’m 
back again, fit for front-line duty. Malcolm, for weeks 
I walked as a dead man, as a man who has lived. I 
said, you've nothing big enough, vital enough, to save 
you. You will never see a red sky again; you will 
never hear a great noise again; you will never experi- 
ence an elemental emotion again,—paralyzing terror, 


74 THE FURNACE 


physical exhaustion, excruciating pain, overwhelming 
grief and loss. You have seen and you have heard, you 
have known the highest and experienced the deepest. 
Only the boy, only the little chap who waited for me 
at night—waited in his loneliness—kept me from utter 
despair. 

“But now I have my marching orders again,—sealed 
orders they are as yet. You remember how we felt 
when they started us for Cantigny in the French trucks, 
and we had not the slightest idea where we were going, 
but were eager and glad because we were going some- 
where? Well, that’s where I am to-night, pounding 
up the road to some Cantigny. Malcolm Frank, we 
have not lived. Life is not behind us. Life is in front 
of us. The life that cries with Brant’s old hero, ‘I am 
for men.’ ” 


CHAPTER VII 


Wie Bruce Jayne parted from Malcolm Frank 
and hurried on to Philadelphia, alert and eager, 
his mind no longer a tomb for grief, but now a treasury 
of memories that made him strong to go forward, he 
left behind him a thoughtful and troubled man. The 
young colonel on landing from the transport, and after 
separating from his friends and tearing himself away 
from newspaper publicity in New York, had hurried 
home, Superintendent Judson accompanying him. An 
overnight trip brought them to the city. Here, in spite 
of the precautions they had taken to keep their move- 
ments a secret, they found themselves again in the 
center of the public eye. The mayor, the leading citi- 
zens generally, and President Branson of the Bancroft 
Steel Company with his associates were present to give 
an unmistakably sincere and generous welcome to the 
returning hero. 

Before he had finally satisfied the first insistent de- 
mands of the public it was mid-afternoon, and night 
had fallen when, with Superintendent Judson still by 
his side, he reached the little cross-road station in the 
shadow of the grimy tipple where he first learned the 
heavy way of work. There was nothing of shame in 
the eyes he cast upon the motley crowd that stood ges- 
ticulating and shouting upon the platform. Indeed, 
not since that morning by the starboard rail of the 
Aquitania, had he been moved as he was now, when he 

75 


76 THE FURNACE 


heard his name spoken in half a dozen languages by 
the neighbors of his boyhood who with simple and un- 
affected gladness welcomed him home. 

There in the very front of the strangely assorted 
and vividly garbed company were his parents,—his 
gray-haired father with an arm about his mother, and 
his sisters and brother. Beyond that first glimpse he 
did not see much; the pent-up emotions of the long 
journey welcomed their release, and the man a nation 
delighted to honor returned to his people as he had left 
them, an unspoiled, genuine youth. 

James Judson took in everything,—not an item from 
that broadly written page of foreign-speaking life here 
in the heart of America escaped him. He saw the 
band,—the same band Malcolm in another time had led 
so proudly down the central street of Jonesville,—heard 
it play the Star-Spangled Banner, saw, too, the maimed 
men, some of them young; the soiled children; the 
shawl-draped, weathered women, and in the midst 
Malcolm’s family, unquestionably different, though un- 
mistakably part of the whole. All that he saw he had 
seen often before, in the great mills of the company, or 
by the streets of the crowded towns that buttressed 
them. But now he was conscious of a change,—he 
knew at once that the change was not in front of him, 
but within him, that what he saw had always been, 
but that his eyes had been “holden” and so as this man 
of affairs, who had suffered, followed the whim of his 
heart, he came to a place where he took hold on the 
pulse of the new life in the womb of Freedom. 

That night was never to be forgotten by the princi- 
pals. There was a noisy home-coming reception, a wild 


THE FURNACE - 


serenade in front of the Frank cottage, that ended with 
Malcolm, his father, and the amazed superintendent 
riding on the shoulders of husky miners to the long 
platform of the Company store where speeches were 
made in the light of oil torches and red fire. The su- 
perintendent’s remarks were felicitous in the extreme; 
he finished by saying: 

“T feel like seventeen nationalities to-night, and I’m 
proud of every drop of my blood.” After that he 
could have had the town for the asking. 

The heart of Malcolm’s father was too full for much 
speaking,—he was fast becoming the patriarch of the 
village, and his tongue of natural eloquence and native 
wisdom was always respectfully listened to. But he 
managed to make a typically illuminating declaration: 

“This night proves to us of the far lands and broken 
peoples that we belong—and are welcome.”’ How the 
crowd, which had not been strongly supplemented by 
additions from Jonesville itself, so that it was a real 
cross-section of the nation’s life, cheered the old miner, 
—and, cheering, believed him. 

Then came the man of the hour. What a figure he 
was in the light of that fateful home-coming evening. 
Not even the great commander, Pershing himself, 
could have filled out the frame of that night as Mal- 
colm filled it,—mighty of body, rugged of face, with 
eyes that had absorbed the fires that leaped up to him 
from the many-tongued people, and a voice that was 
vibrant, the soul of his hour. 

“Friends and neighbors,” he began. “I would rather 
be here than a king.” And then, taking them into his 
confidence, he told the dreams of his boyhood; took 


78 THE FURNACE 


them into the little old kitchen where his father had 
opened the book of America’s greatness, and on by the 
way of the green hills and the old tipple and that never- 
to-be-forgotten Memorial Day in Jonesville to the 
belching furnaces and into the hospital. His voice rang 
with his gratitude as, pointing to James Judson, he 
said: 

“They treated me like a man; proved that they held 
me as better than slag and more valuable than pig 
iron.”’ 

About the war he said little. He winced under the 
infinite pains of its memory when he spoke of the com- 
rades who “turned not again home,” but his voice be- 
came as the voice of a prophet, and there was a subtle 
change in its deepening tones as he concluded: 

“We have learned one thing from the war—there 
are no separating seas, no remote continents. The 
farthest tribe lives in our back-yard. We here will 
never be the same again. We have come up from the 
mine and out of the factory to help save civilization, as 
they truly told us, but in coming we have eaten of the 
fruit of the tree of knowledge. We have learned hu- 
man values, and we can never go back again. While 
the fingers of white-gowned nurses and the hands of 
skilled doctors taught us that our price was above that 
of the guns and equipment we carried, war’s greater 
surgeon was cutting away the film from the eyes of 
our souls. 

“And for this,” now the speaker’s mood became ex- 
alted; he was again the unquestioning boy by his 
father’s knee, and how the eyes of two fathers feasted 
upon him! “and for this, we thank great America, In 


THE FURNACE 79 


her arms she has lifted us out of the soot of the mine 
and the noise of the mill into the sun of her freedom. 
Aliens and strangers we came, and she welcomed us; 
fed us and clothed us; taught us and honored us’”—his 
eyes seemed to rest for an instant upon his khaki-cov- 
ered breast with its ribbon-line that marked the decora- 
tions he might have worn—‘“gave us her faith to de- 
fend, to suffer, to die for,—and to live for.’’ The 
words of Bruce Jayne, spoken on that last night at 
sea, came to him, and in their spirit he finished, ““We 
who return, beyond any discharge the nation may give 
us, are bound by the oath we have taken, and by the 
memories that run to the graves that mound behind our 
old trenches. We have given our lives to our country, 
and her cause. We can never take them back again.” 

The celebration broke up like a prayer meeting. In- 
deed, “‘Peg-leg’”’ Schuster confided to his wife an hour 
later that he “felt like he’d been to early morning mass 
and confessional. Didn’t the lad talk like a good 
father; though, instead of a soldier ?”’ 

The kitchen of the Frank home was a congested 
place until near daybreak. Old friends could not be 
denied, and afterward the family had much to talk 
about. James Judson seemed almost a part of it, in 
spite of the generations of environment that stood 
between him and Malcolm’s people, so understandingly 
had he entered into the emotions of the occasion. He 
told them now of what awaited the returning soldier, 
and these parents who had known the drudgery and 
the hardness of labor found their reward in the good 
fortune of their son. And again the old miner, whose 
soul was the soul of a poet, thanked “Great America.” 


80 THE FURNACE 


When the intimate circle was at last disturbed by 
thoughts of retiring, an embarrassment immediately 
made itself known. The Franks had no “spare cham- 
ber,” and the tippletown had no hotel. But Superin- 
tendent Judson was quite equal to the occasion. “T’ll 
bunk with the army,’ he laughed, “unless his young 
brother objects, in which case I’ll ‘stand post’ here in 
the kitchen until the seven-twenty, when I must get 
back to the city.””. And bunk with the army he did. 

Not until years later, and then only to very intimate 
ears, did Malcolm Frank ever speak of one occurrence 
of that night. It seemed that he had just fallen asleep 
when he was roused by an arm creeping under his neck, 
and a voice, the voice of a sleeper, ‘““There, son !—there, 
son!—don’t worry; I'll steer you.”’ And almost lost 
then in deeper breathings, he heard the name that was 
left James Judson when the wife of his youth fell dead 
at the altar of motherhood. 

A few weeks later, after his discharge, Malcolm 
Frank found himself in the general offices of the Olds- 
burg Steel Mill as assistant superintendent under the 
man he had come to thoroughly believe in. On his first 
day with his new assignment he was honored by a visit 
from the president of the company. Mr. Branson was 
cordial in the extreme; only one thing in that officer’s 
greeting jarred a little on the keenly responsive mind 
of the new assistant. 

“We are mighty glad to have you with us. Not all 
the disloyalty was smashed when the Hindenburg line 
was broken, and not all the ‘Reds’ are in Russia. The 
company has some hard days in front of it. The pam- 
pering a crowd of these ignorant ‘hunkies’ got during 


THE FURNACE 81 


the war has made them too nice for dirty jobs, and 
we're going to have some trouble before we get back 
to normal again. We need you, and men like you, 
who can lead, who are trusted, and who hate treason. 
Your shoulders are broad; your hands are big ;—you'll 
need them. Remember,—this company and the cor- 
poration pay well for efficiency and loyalty.” 

What it was that troubled him young Frank did not 
know. Of course he resented the old whip-lash of 
“hunky” and refused to be complimented because the 
president, in using it, had ignored his former standing, 
but his feeling was more than a casual, quick-passing 
resentment. There was foreboding and a sense of 
presentiment in it. 

Within a short time after he had taken up his duties, 
Malcolm was astonished by being invited to take a 
room in the home of Superintendent Judson. His quick 
refusal had so evidently pained the man who had taken 
so generous an interest in him that he almost as quickly 
reconsidered, and within a few days after the invitation 
had been extended, he found himself enjoying the com- 
forts and luxuries that had once belonged to the boy 
whose laughing, reckless eyes looked down upon him 
from a medallion that stood upon the mantel. 

Soon the lodging arrangement was amended to in- 
clude breakfast, and before long the two men were fac- 
ing each other at every meal and sitting together 
through the long evenings. For Malcolm Frank the ad- 
justment was most fortunate. It gave him in days the 
knowledge of steel that otherwise he could have ac- 
quired only after years of first-hand application. James 
Judson was a good teacher, and he taught Malcolm as 


82 THE FURNACE 


he had hoped to teach another. From his lips the young 
assistant superintendent heard the romance of Carnegie 
and those others who without capital and friends built 
upon their native genius in resourceful poverty the 
mighty structure that now flings up its shining roof to 
cover the nation and the world. He came to see the 
place of steel in the development of America. The 
rails that gleamed in desert suns and wound through 
mountain passes became to him the ropes that bound 
the scattered portions of the nation into one, and those 
who had drawn them from their molten mass and laid 
them down were no longer mere workers in metals, 
but builders of the Republic. He knew, as he listened 
to James Judson, that it was indeed the ‘“‘voice” he 
heard, when in response to that indefinable impulse on 
the great transport, he had answered the chaplain’s 
self-questioning with, “I know what I’m going to do,— 
I’m going back to the mill.” 

As for James Judson, the coming of the young as- 
sociate into his life was the crowning of his career. 
Even his well-nigh unmovable poise and optimism had 
been profoundly shaken by the repeated tragedies that 
had come down upon him, and the death of his only 
son, killed in action, while in many respects a relief, an 
anguish of joy,—left him alone. Malcolm Frank lifted 
him out of himself, out of his past, and gave him a new 
and fresh reason for living. To all who knew him he 
was a changed man. The two,—one young, just out 
of the great melting-pot, burned by its heats, but un- 
scarred, eager and of high courage; the other approach- 
ing rapidly the age of retirement, born of the genera- 
tion that produced in industry America’s empire-build- 


THE FURNACE 83 


ers, chastened by disappointment, with a mind highly 
trained, and a heart that had never grown cold,—these 
two built rapidly the house of their friendship, and 
building it, so laid its bricks in the mortar of faith, 
man.to man, that storms which leveled the era of good 
feeling that grew up, watered by the tears and blood of 
the war, left it standing unshaken. 

For the first few weeks of his association with the 
Oldsburg mills, James Judson’s assistant spent practi- 
cally all of his time with the men. Into the elemental 
heat of the furnaces he went again. Here his welcome, 
while genuine, was marked by restraint,—restraint that, 
try as he would, he could not altogether overcome. He 
was liked,—he knew that,—and he was trusted, but, 
being trusted, he was no longer taken into their confi- 
dence. This he knew, too. 

“You see,” said the husband of his former landlady, 
who, having lost a leg under a huge fragment of scrap, 
was now a bridge-keeper, “you're part of the Com- 
pany now, and not one of us,”’ and when Malcolm pro- 
tested, insisting that there must be, and was, no dif- 
ference, that there was no company apart from its men, 
and that he was exactly the man among them he had 
always been, the cripple replied: 

“Tell that to the boss—he’ll show you quick enough 
where you're wrong. You don’t lie, but you don’t speak 
the truth,” he continued bluntly. “There is a difference 
now,—things that are grinding us, don’t touch you,— 
wages, hours, the right to kick without kicking our- 
selves out, the right to have somebody kick for us,— 
somebody outside, who can’t be fired. And,” he hesi- 
tated for a second, and then gave the young assistant 


84 THE FURNACE 


an expression of confidence that warmed that official’s 
heart, ““Spies—don’t you see it? You can’t be with us 
and with them. Youcan help us. I’m one that believes 
you'll try,—but there’s a difference, I tell you. Lis- 
ten,’ the man’s voice sank to a whisper, and he 
glanced furtively about as he finished: “If we go on 
strike for our rights, and for a chance to live decently, | 
we strike against you.” Dee 

Malcolm said nothing more, beyond leaving with his 
old friend the assurance that no change in his personal 
standing with the governing authorities of the organi- 
zation could ever change his spirit toward workers 
from among whom he came and of whom he still felt 
himself to be. But he started back to his office with a 
disturbed and troubled mind. 

He went over again the clear-cut sentences of Presi- 
dent Branson’s letter inviting him to come to the or- 
ganization, his emphasis upon “influence,” the “con- 
fidence’ the workers would place in him, and “loyalty.” 
But loyalty to what? To the corporation, of course, 
but to the men of it! to the flesh and blood of it, first. 
And he reénforced his argument for the strong wish 
of his heart with the imposing record of company bene- 
factions, numbering among them his own unstintedly, 
generous treatment. 

But the uncomfortable implications as well as the 
direct charges of the bridge-keeper’s denial persisted, 
and harassed him as he lived over again that interview 
with the president just after he came to his desk. 
Hours, wages, lack of representation, points of contact, 
and that most distasteful, that nastiest word of all 
words,—spies. He had already gone over at length 


THE FURNACE 8s 


with the superintendent practically all of the ground 
just covered in that hurried conversation,—all but that 
last. He refused to believe that. 

As to wages, the company declared it was leading 
the market. He had resented its effort to force up the 
average in news stories for the general public by lump- 
ing all classes together—high-salaried rollers with com- 
mon laborers. He knew that the man of the street had 
an utterly wrong conception of what the wage of the 
steel worker was, and he smiled as he remembered the 
rather caustic criticism by a local minister as reported 
in the press, of the workers in the mills who were 
“drawing wages in excess of teachers and preachers 
and spending their surplus in financing a prospective 
strike for more.” 

Malcolm’s argument with the superintendent at this 
point had not been a vigorous one, for James Judson 
granted the justice of much claimed by the men. “But,” 
he had said, “‘we are passing through a period of re- 
construction ; we cannot pay war wages and keep going; 
to shut down will be disaster for all. Had these fel- 
lows saved when they had the chance, had they saved 
instead of wasted, they would be in position to weather 
a storm of depression. But they acted as though they 
had to get rid of the last nickel before the next pay,— 
why,” he went on, “after the first big raise every 
automobile in this town was grabbed up. Such busi- 
ness as was done by the dealers you wouldn’t believe 
could be possible. One Pole from ‘Goat Hollow’ when 
he found that the last available car had been taken, 
bought a second-hand motor-hearse from Stevenson 
Brothers, and drove back and forth here for months, 


bee, THE FURNACE 


with his wife sitting by his side on the driver’s seat, 
and their mess of kids looking out through the plate- 
glass windows.” 

When Malcolm had recovered sufficiently for the su- 
perintendent to proceed, he continued, “As for hours, 
I’m with you, and so is the company. You’ve read 
what we said to the congressional committee a year 
ago. But the change from the twelve-hour day can’t 
be made in an hour. If it were, you would see indus- 
trial chaos in a score of cities. For instance, in the 
Bancroft Steel Company more than 50,000 men are 
employed. We would have to find 25,000 new laborers 
to keep going to keep the 50,000 men now employed 
working. Only the Almighty could find them, and it’s 
my hunch that He wouldn’t—and if He did, then God 
pity us! What would we do with them? Frank, has 
it ever occurred to you that the housing problem alone 
would be appalling? Not enough rooms now, good, 
bad and worse” (Malcolm remembered his old attic 
lodgings), “for the workers we have. Yes, if these 
sanctified idiots who heap curses upon us would show 
us how to solve the problem, we would give them carte 
blanche to go on raving forever.” 

To Malcolm’s often repeated queries as to the lack 
of opportunity for conference between the employers 
and their employees, Mr. Judson had said in substance, 
“Frankly, I have not always been able to fully endorse 
the corporation’s attitude. I grant that there is room 
for improvement. But we are, I believe, honestly look- 
ing for something better, and we are more than will- 
ing to be shown the way out. Absolutely we draw the 
line at outside interference. Our men can say their say 


THE FURNACE 87 


whenever they want to; we select our foremen, as you 
know, whenever we can, from among them. Of course 
the average down there in the pits doesn’t climb out,— 
poor devils, they can’t,—but that’s not our fault. I’m 
doing my best here to understand these workers, and, 
Malcolm, I’ve had new enthusiasm for facing the dis- 
couragements that at times just about kill my spirit 
that come to a man when he runs into the dull-witted, 
slow-moving, many-tongued gibberish that we have 
here,—new enthusiasm, I say, since I went to your 
home-coming. I want the worst of them to have a 
square deal. I’m going to see that they have it. ‘Treat 
‘em right’ is the motto in Oldsburg; not ‘treat ’em 
rough,’ and the foreman who can’t learn that inside the 
mill, or won't, finishes his education outside” (the 
young assistant knew the truth of that statement). 
“But, ye gods, if you turn them over to these mercenary 
labor leaders, rank outsiders, Bolshevists who know 
less than nothing about the steel business, what 
chance do they have,—and what chance do we 
have? The corporation is watching closely the 
shop committee plan of the Central Company, 
—David Strong’s,—a great man he is, and big 
things he’s doing since he took over control from his 
father. We’re watching his experiment, I say. Some 
of the men are frankly skeptical, perhaps a few are 
unfriendly. There are many minds among us, but I’m 
interested, more than interested. I’m favorably im- 
pressed. 

“As for the other thing,—the unionizing of these 
plants, the interruption and dictation of outsiders, how- 
ever selected,—we'll close our doors first.” 


88 THE. FURNACE 


Thus it stood between James Judson and his young 
assistant, and the mind of the elder was pretty much 
the mind of the younger, though the younger added to 
the interest both held in common, a sense of high moral 
obligation, obligation to his own, for finding the solu- 
tion to the problem, for solving the riddle, and closing 
the great open sore of a wound. 

But Malcolm had grown restive under the changed 
relations that slowly but surely he came to see now 
existed between his former mill associates and himself. 
In the changed atmosphere surrounding the workers he 
was embarrassed,—embarrassed for the first time in 
his life; while in the office he was constantly running 
into things that eluded him,—half-open leads that 
somehow closed just as he would have entered them. 
He knew that he was popular with his new associates, 
—save one, and of him more later,—that he had not 
only the full confidence of James Judson, as to his in- 
tegrity and ability, but of President Branson as well, 
and that among the men of the plant he was trusted, 
even looked to as an advocate at headquarters. He 
knew, too, that he had made rapid progress toward 
learning the intricate ways of the industry, toward be- 
coming acquainted with steel. He was giving a con- 
scientious attention to details that left no room to 
doubt his intention to fully reward the confidence of 
the men who had given him his “big chance.” 

But after all this has been written, this further must 
be added. He was not satisfied with the real progress 
he was making,—progress toward becoming a vital 
part of the business, a fragment of the soul of the in- 
dustry. In two directions he was conscious of a handi- 


THE FURNACE 89 


cap :—the men held him at half an arm’s length because 
he was in the great office, and the office, yes, even the 
superintendent, “‘relieved’”’ him of certain “embarrass- 
ing responsibilities,’ because he had come to his desk 
from the pit. 

And now, as he took account of himself and remem- 
bered the words of “Deeds” Shuski, the crippled 
bridge-tender, whom he had just left, he knew that the 
worker was right, but that he had spoken only half of 
the truth, for it seemed that somehow in coming into 
success, in taking the high leading way to the goal of 
his ambition, he had suddenly left his past far behind 
and cut himself off from the intimacies of old associa- 
tions without gaining their equivalent in the new. 

With this riot of emotions in full command of his 
mind, he came by the superintendent’s private entrance 
into the office he now shared with James Judson, whom 
he surprised in conversation with Peter Brudidge of 
the general offices. The two men were bending over 
some confidentially marked papers. 


CHAPTER VIII 


N OW Brudidge was the one man who had quite ap- 
parently not taken kindly to the appointment of 
Frank as first assistant under Mr. Judson. He was an 
old employee of the corporation who had risen from 
the ranks,—indeed at one time he had led them and 
was looked upon as a dangerous radical by the office. 
But advancement had come, had been made to come, 
opportunely, and he was now in charge of a special de- 
partment, the exact responsibilities of which had never 
been explained to Malcolm, He had a desk somewhere 
in the great city at General Headquarters. Why he 
had resented the advancement of the returning young 
colonel, James Judson had not seen fit to fully explain 
to his new associate,—if he knew. He had merely 
said, “Watch Brudidge, he doesn’t like you,—perhaps 
he wanted this job himself, and doesn’t know that if 
he’d been the last man he couldn’t have had it,—but 
watch. him.” 

Brudidge it was in conversation with Mr. Judson 
when unexpectedly, and an hour before his usual time 
for finishing mill inspections, Malcolm walked into 
the office. Abruptly the conversation stopped,—so 
abruptly that the assistant superintendent was painfully 
aware of the interruption his entrance had been. Bru- 
didge looked up and when he recognized the reason for 
the sudden dropping of Superintendent Judson’s voice, 

go 


THE FURNACE gI 


he glowered, and with a half-vicious snarl said under 
his breath: 

“Bright angel appears,—business done for the day.” 

Frank did not get the words, but he instantly sensed 
their direction, and resented the manner behind them. 
James Judson’s only comment, also under his breath, 
was: 

“Don’t bother the angels, Brudidge—some of them 
have stingers as well as wings.” 

Peter Brudidge was no mean figure of a man as he 
stood that day in open insolence regarding the one he 
looked upon as an interloper. He was a year over 
thirty, powerfully built,—he stood chin to chin with 
Malcolm Frank,—dark of hair and of eye, with a coun- 
tenance as malevolent as it was crafty. That he was 
regarded, however, with consideration by no less a per- 
son than President Branson, Malcolm knew, Why 
James Judson did not like him, he had never asked. 

Frank stood now, ill at ease, waiting for either his 
superior or the visitor to break the silence. So intently 
did he wait that the presence of a young woman seated 
in his chair at the opposite end of the room from which 
he had entered escaped him. When Frank entered she 
had already been there for some time, an interested 
observer of the conversation she had, of course, not 
heard. 

It was James Judson who broke the painful silence,— 
Malcolm thought that he had detected just a trace of 
irony in his voice as he said: 

“Brudidge, go over that again for the assistant 
superintendent’s benefit. He will very likely be inter- 
ested.” 


92 THE FURNACE 


Brudidge darted a surprised look at his superior, 
hesitated for just a fraction of a second, then shrugged 
his shoulders and replied: 

“As you will, sir.” He began a story the like of 
which Malcolm Frank had never heard, one that left 
him hot with anger and then cold with dread, a story 
of the cruelty of industrial warfare and its treachery, 
by the side of which the refined barbarisms of modern 
armed conflict paled, for these latter at least were di- 
rected against foes,—foes equipped and warned. 

One by one, as he spoke, Brudidge turned over the 
pages of the file that lay upon the table before them. 
He continued to disregard the assistant superintendent, 
his dark face still wore its bianket of studied insolence, 
and though at the direction of his superior he now 
talked for the man he thoroughly disliked, he spoke to 
James Judson. 

“Here is the record of your mill,—the record to date. 
You have denied that these ‘hunkies’ and a few others 
who train with them were disloyal,—and I say that the 
way you have stood by your men is to your credit. I 
respect you for it, and if ever men had reason to be 
square with a management, these ” (a vile name 
coarsened the unmistakable sincerity of the tribute he 
paid to the gray-headed superintendent) “there in Olds- 
burg have had it. 

“But my business is to get the facts, and I’ve been 
getting them. It hasn’t been easy, and it hasn’t been 
swift; we failed with a dozen men, but five hundred 
dollars was too much for ‘Red’ Poluskiani and here we 
have at least a beginning.” 

Then began the record, reports on conversations with 





THE FURNACE 93 


men and between men, conversations in lodgings and 
between shifts, conversations in the pits and words 
dropped in the ovens. The names of the speakers were 
there,—how they burned in his mind as Frank read 
them,—names of men he had worked with, men he 
had shared his bed and his food with,—branded as 
plotters against the organization he served. But what 
had they said and what were they planning to do? He 
reached down to pick up one of the reports, and Bru- 
didge carelessly knocked his hand back from the table; 
but the hand of James Judson reached over and picked 
_ up the paper while that official said crisply: 

“Tl read it.’ And he read,—read the curses of 
blistered lips that cried out against their torture, that 
swore to make the corporation pay. Read the threats, 
idle for the most part, of boasters who in fancied se- 
curity gave free rein to their imaginations as well as to 
their passions. Again and again in those crudely 
worded sentences of big, unlettered “Red” Malcolm 
recognized the unmistakable effort of the man to justify 
his “wage”; to satisfy his “buyer.” Again and again, 
knowing the workers as he did, he found glaring 
discrepancies that branded the report as essentially 
false. 

As the assistant superintendent realized that “Red” 
was but one cog in a great wheel, and a faulty one at 
that, he went white with anger,—the sickening spectacle 
of intrigue and espionage rose like a fog of shame 
above the great furnaces and hung upon the towering 
stacks. And now, as his superintendent read, Malcolm 
Frank stood tingling to his fingertips. His eye never 
left the face of the man who had challenged him. As 


94 THE FURNACE 


for the eyes of Brudidge, there was nothing about their 
expression to indicate that he knew he was not alone 
with his superior. 

“What does it all mean?” thought Malcolm, and he 
remembered “‘Red’’ Poluskiani, a great hulk of a man, 
a decent sort, too, popular among his associates, always 
ready to carry an extra shift to ease off a sick ‘‘buddie,” 
but now playing the miserable game of a spy, worse, 
the game of a traitor, stealing the words of his friends. 
“Red” Poluskiani a Judas. 

Then Malcolm’s mood suddenly changed, other 
things he recalled about Poluskiani,—the two strong 
sons he gave to the war, to the war that kept even their 
bodies. ‘The little girl who fell on the street stricken 
with infantile paralysis, the long weeks of her agony, 
the slow months of her recovery, and now her braces 
and hobbling gait,—all this came to him as he stood 
looking through the face into the soul of Peter Bru- 
didge,—the motherless home that big ‘Red’ had tried 
to decently father,—big “Red” whose hours were the 
hours of steel, big ““Red’’ whose wages were the wages 
of a helper, big ‘‘Red’’ with the memory of dead sons 
and the needs of hungry, unfortunate children. 

As James Judson read on through the treason of 
“Red” Poluskiani, his young assistant became tense 
with the set of spring steel, and his eyes laid hold more 
deeply on the face of Brudidge. This, then, was his 
“job’”—the job of Pete Brudidge, at the hands of the 
great corporation, corrupter of men. He broke in on 
his friend who still read on: 

“That’s enough,—too much.” 

The superintendent looked up, startled by the new 


THE FURNACE Os 


note, a tone he had never heard before in his associate’s 
voice. Brudidge made no sign. 

“That’s enough, I say,’ Frank repeated, and then 
Brudidge broke in: 

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” and like 
the flash of an answering rifle at night came from 
Frank’s lips the word, “Something! and he went on 
with a tremendous passion: 

“That record is a record of treason and shame, and 
God pity us! the greater treason and shame are not 
‘Red’s.’” 

An angry light leaped into the eyes of James Judson, 
but his voice was easy when he said, “Steady, Frank,— 
what do you mean?” Brudidge relaxed with a smile 
of satisfaction as he saw the two friends now facing 
each other. 

“What do I mean, sir?—and forgive me for for- 
getting that you were reading—what do I mean? [I 
mean that the company bought the honor of a man for 
dirty money, bought the honor of a man, driven by 
need, distracted by grief, bought him and then turned 
him loose on his fellows. But when this corporation 
Bought ‘Red’s’ honor, it had less than he had, and he 
had nothing. The foulest game in the world, sir, we 
played—the game of Judas Iscariot. In the war we 
sent our spies against the enemy, but those men of the 
secret service were heroes fighting a lone fight for their 
country within the lines of the foe. Here we fouled 
our own nest. These men are part of ourselves. A 
few months ago we called them ‘Americans all.’ Now 
we treat them like Huns. 

“And what of the stuff big ‘Red’ hands you? When 


96 THE FURNACE 


a man sells his soul, what he says doesn’t matter. He 
gave this company’s intelligence department’ (and 
Frank shot a lightning glance at Brudidge) “what it 
paid him to get, but what is it, now that we've got it? 
Lies,—five hundred dollars’ worth of them,—lies, lies 
that are dirty and damned.” 

Those last words came from Frank’s lips like leap- 
ing swords, and his whole attitude indicated that they 
had eager brothers; that every one of them was born a 
twin. But now he waited,—James Judson only 
watched him. It was Brudidge who answered, his 
voice poorly concealing his intense feeling: 

“Lies are they? You'll prove that? ‘Red’ Polus- 
kiani got his price, and we've got the goods on as rotten 
a bunch of anarchists as ever took good company 
money. A man’s bound to defend his kind,—but don’t 
cross your breeds, Frank, and don’t double-cross—” but 
he got no farther. A huge hand closed over his mouth, 
and before he had time to recover from his first sur- 
prise he had been spun on his heels like a top and shot 
through the door. Before he could right himself, he 
had skidded ten feet down the strip of linoleum that 
ran between the stenographers’ desks and the railing. 
Then he turned and charged back like an infuriated 
bull,—to find the door locked. While he hesitated, un- 
decided whether to smash his way through or retire, 
and before he had recovered his vile tongue, his hat 
shot over the transom, and the voice that followed it 
said crisply, “Good morning, Mr. Brudidge.” He 
never was quite sure whether the voice was that of his 
vanquisher or of James Judson. But without answer- 
ing he turned and walked blindly away.. 


THE FURNACE 97 


Within the office two stern men faced each other,— 
the younger white with anger and panting from recent 
exertion, the elder ominously quiet. The younger spoke 
first: 

“T suppose there’s nothing to do but resign. God 
knows I’d die rather than disappoint you, but I 
stood for his filth as long as I could. I—’” his voice 
broke. 

Then James Judson spoke, “Say, Malcolm, let’s 
call it a day.” He turned to the desk and pressed a 
button. “Have the car brought around,” he directed 
the brisk young woman who responded; “the colonel 
and I have an important conference—at home.” 

It was then that a strained voice, a voice half of 
panic and half of laughter, broke in on the startled 
men: “Oh, pardon me, Mr. Judson, I’m so sorry.” The 
superintendent swung about and took a step toward 
the young woman who had risen from the chair of the 
first assistant and was standing now at the end of his 
desk, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, her lips 
parted, and her eyes wide with excitement. Tall and 
strong, her figure cast in the mold of perfection, her 
cheeks aflame from the fires of passion that had burned 
high before her, she was a presence of exquisite beauty. 

“Pardon me, Miss”—James Judson hesitated and 
went on—‘“‘Miss Stanton. Pardon me, and forgive me. 
I forgot you completely,” and “Malcolm,” he called as 
though that completely overcome gentleman were miles 
away instead of frozen to the spot where the voice of 
the unnoted guest had reached him, “Malcolm, come 
here,’—and Malcolm went. 

“Malcolm,—pardon me, Colonel Frank,—Oh, merci- 


98 THE FURNACE 


= 


ful Heavens,—pardon me again, Miss—Miss Stanton,” 
and again he had trouble with the name. “Miss Stan- 
ton, this is Colonel Frank, our first assistant superin- 
tendent,—er,—a man who loves peace, Miss Stanton, 
almost as well as a fight.” 

Miss Stanton unclasped her hands and with an im- 
pulsive frankness that Malcolm would not soon forget, 
acknowledged the introduction and said, “It has been a 
very wonderful morning, Colonel,—a very wonderful 
morning.” 

_ Superintendent Judson then went on to say that Miss 
Gene Stanton was a settlement worker from New 
York, on special assignment, and that she had come to 
spend several weeks visiting the families of the em- 
ployees. 

“She is here at the request of President Branson, 
Colonel,—so however arduous the duty,’ and he 
grinned at his associate, “we must show her every 
courtesy. Especially do I warn you against such little 
_ pleasantries as tossing her hat through the transom.” 

Malcolm grew suddenly dizzy—in the reaction of 
the last five minutes he had forgotten the tragedy. 

“We'll drop you at the ‘Y.W.,’ Miss Stanton,” Mr. 
Judson continued, ‘‘and then this ‘Combat Division’ 
and I will go to our conference.” 


CHAPTER IX 


Wyse James Judson and Malcolm Frank entered 

the great living-room of the Superintendent’s 
home after introducing Gene Stanton to the General 
Secretary of the Y.W.C.A., which was to be her home 
during her stay in Oldsburg and in the various other 
mill towns of the Bancroft Steel Company, they did 
not at once plunge into their “conference.” Frank, 
very naturally, waited for his superior to speak, and 
Mr. Judson was in no hurry. After standing before 
the mantel for a moment, he excused himself and went 
upstairs. A few minutes later there were unmistakable 
sounds indicating that he was taking a bath! It was 
fully half an hour before he returned. 

In the meantime a former officer in the Army of the 
United States was “reforming” his “scattered” organi- 
zation, and “‘fortifying’”’ himself against a vast uncer- 
tainty. 

“Colonel Frank,” said Mr. Judson, as at last he hur- 
ried into the room, “Colonel Frank” (with mock for- 
mality), “I owe you an apology,—the second, I believe, 
for the afternoon. I have detained you:—very 1m- 
portant matters,—very important,—have delayed me.” 

But “Colonel Frank” had reached the end of his en- 
durance, and he said, in a strained voice: 

“For God’s sake, Superintendent, don’t be cruel. Cut 
the poor thing’s head off—put it out of its misery.” 

“Not on your life, Colonel,” Mr. Judson replied, 

090 


100 THE FURNACE 


“not on your life. This is a prize bird; it may suffer, 
but, by the Eternal, I’ll save it,” and he came close to 
the young man, reached a hand out, appealingly, with 
just a suggestion of pathos, and said: 

“Malcolm, you won't leave me?” 

In utter astonishment Frank leaped to his feet; in- 
credulously he looked into the face of his benefactor 
and friend. | 

“Leave you,” he shouted, “leave you? Didn’t you 
see me go out of that door and over the transom? Ye 
Gods,—would you torture me?” 

“Sit down, Malcolm,” replied Mr. Judson. “Sit 
down. Yes, my eyes still function. I guess that I 
didn’t miss any of the exercises this morning, and I 
wouldn’t hurt you—if I could. I’—and tears that 
gave Malcolm Frank the last cyclonic shock of the day, 
welled in the gray man’s eyes—‘“I think too much of 
you for that.” 

For long minutes there was profound silence in the 
great room now losing its outlines in the shadows of 
an approaching storm—profound silence save for the 
deep breathing of two men—two men who had made 
a great and mutual avowal, one that was to withstand 
the shock of abysmal tragedy—men who, being men, 
did not touch each other, but who sat together in soul 
communion. 

Later James Judson gave Malcolm his frank judg- 
ment of the situation. 

“IT put myself into your drive when you sent that 
carrion through the door. I’ve never liked him. I’ve 
never trusted him—and I’ve liked his job less. But, 
just the same, you were hasty. You went too fast for 


THE FURNACE IOI 


your ‘cause’—that’s what we'll call it—too fast for 
your cause. Perhaps you hurt it. Branson is pretty 
strong for the thing Brudidge stands for,—Pete knows 
it. Just one thing may save us a show-down at this 
time. No man ever gave that blackleg a slide for his 
life before. He'll not advertise the fact if he can 
avoid doing so. Here’s a telegram I sent as we came 
through the office.” 

Malcolm read, “Peter Brudidge, Bancroft Steel 
Company. Conference this morning absolutely confi- 
dential. All parties here so understand. Judson, Su- 
perintendent.” The assistant marveled at the intuition 
of his friend, who now continued: 

“We must see Branson to-morrow. Ill turn you 
loose on him. God knows what it will mean; but one 
thing I know,—he won't fire you. As for us, we must 
be brutally frank with each other from now on. Up to 
this point I have saved you—but now, my boy, you 
play the course as it is, and take the ‘rough’ as you find 
ste 

Malcolm’s heart leaped at the words, and an old un- 
certainty left him. 

“We're coming close to evil times—a strike, the 
greatest we have ever known, the most serious in the 
history of the Company, is due to break any day now, 
and we’re committed already to a policy I don’t like,— 
a policy that you'll detest, but, hear me, mark it down, 
Malcolm, one that will win. You saw part of that 
policy to-day, and—but what’s the use? you'll grow 
wise too soon anyhow, and the thing that I want you 
to see now, the big thing, the only thing that counts, 1s 
that we need you. I need you, but that isn’t it. We 


102 THE FURNACE 


need you,—the corporation, its men, I say, need you. 
You are young and dynamic, with far-seeing eyes, and 
you were born to command. I’m old,—sometimes I 
think that I’ve lived. But since you came, I’ve thought 
that in you I would live again. Now I see that we 
must live together for this industry—the men of it, 
first, the soul of it, to change the wrong of it, to 
strengthen the good of it, to direct the power of it.” 

After an interval Malcolm Frank answered, speak- 
ing very quietly, for a great calm had come upon him, 
as with the darkness that had settled full upon the 
room: 

“T will go with you, my friend,’ and James Judson 
spoke the last words of the day then. ‘We will go to- 
gether,’ he said. How far that meant, they did not 
know. 

Long into the night Malcolm Frank lay sleepless 
upon the bed of Judson’s son,—the other son. Again 
and again the events of the day passed before him— 
the conversation with “Deeds” Shuski, the clash in the 
office, the soul-stirring conversation in the room below, 
and the meeting with Gene Stanton. After he had, as 
it were, watched the storm sweep over him again—for 
the calm in which he had separated from the superin- 
tendent had not deserted him,—the words of the un- 
expected visitor remained like a song in the night: 

“It has been a very wonderful morning, Colonel,— 
a very wonderful morning.” 

How vividly the picture of her, standing by his desk, 
returned,—a picture set in the lights and shadows of 
deep emotion, framed in tragic passions, a picture that 
in his eyes would never fade. “A very wonderful 


THE FURNACE 103 


morning” were the words with which at last he fell into 
a deep sleep. 

In the morning James Judson and the first assistant 
went immediately into the city and were soon closeted in 
private conference with President Branson. What 
transpired behind those carefully bolted doors can be 
very largely surmised by the reader. The attitude of 
the Bancroft Steel Company toward the issues directly 
involved in the impending strike and particularly to- 
ward the matter immediately responsible for the visit 
to the president of the Company, are already pretty 
well known, and the viewpoint of Colonel Frank, which 
we may assume has very largely the support of his im- 
mediate superior, has been unmistakable from the be- 
ginning. 

This much should be written of the interview itself, 
—it was unsatisfactory to both parties. President 
Branson heard the new assistant through. Naturally 
an impatient man, he restrained himself while he 
watched appraisingly the face of the speaker. “As for 
Malcolm, he was completely in hand, and presented his 
case as of the Company’s interests and from the view- 
point of a man who, having come up from the ranks 
with generous treatment to a position of trust, owes 
his best judgment and fullest information to his su- 
periors. His plea was for “first things,’ but when he 
dealt with what he called “under-cover’’ methods, he 
did not mince his words, and Jasper Branson flushed a 
purplish red as he listened, for while even Superin- 
tendent Judson was unaware of the fact, the depart- 
ment of Peter Brudidge was a creation and pet of the 
president. 


104 THE FURNACE 


When Malcolm Frank had finished, Mr. Branson 
did not at once reply. He waited as though to be sure 
that the speaker had nothing more to say, and when he 
did speak, James Judson, knowing the man, not only 
rejoiced in his temper, but eta at his poise and 
self-control. 

“Colonel Frank,” the president began, “‘you are right 
in much that you say. I am impressed with your 
judgments—many of them. I am particularly happy to 
find that in instance after instance you have grasped 
our viewpoint. I have reason to know that you have 
had success in getting our viewpoint ‘over’ with others.” 
He paused rather impressively for an instant, and Mal- 
colm thought of “spies” who might have made reports 
that did not pass first through the hands of Peter Bru- 
didge. 

“As to hours, I need say nothing—time will solve 
that problem. As to wages, we are doing the best that 
we can now. As to conference methods, we are wait- 
ing and looking for light, but by [with an oath] 
I began where you did, and have gone through the 
grades; slaved with the slaves, and I say that the man 
with the stuff in him gets up and out. There is now 
no plan in sight equal to that of first-hand contact of 
the foreman with his men. Why, when I was a fore- 
man in the plant of David Strong’s father, and later the 
superintendent, I knew every man by his first name,— 
six hundred of them. I knew their family affairs; they 
trusted me,—came to me with their problems. That’s 
the plan we have here, the best plan yet evolved. Some 
silver-spooned babies, wiser than their fathers, have 
something better to propose, but the Bancroft Steel 





THE FURNACE 105 





Company follows the lead of experience, and by 
[with another oath] we are not in the business of mak- 
ing ‘pap’ for weak infants.” 

For a moment the president had gotten out of hand, 
indicated his true form, perhaps—his two auditors won- 
dered at his rather coarse reference to the present mana- 
ger of the Central Metal Company, and the younger 
had an almost irresistible desire to ask him whether he 
thought that a foreman, a superintendent, or president, 
could have in mind the names and become familiar with 
the personal problems of fifty thousand men instead of 
six hundred, the majority of them foreign-born and 
foreign-gpeaking, and whether he had any sort of a 
plan for providing a square deal for the workers whose 
foreman might be the kind of fellow to deny them a 
voice and refuse them their rights. But he was as good 
a listener now as the speaker had been. 

President Branson continued, “Your indignation 
against what you call ‘under-cover methods’ which you 
no doubt regard as worse than spying—I believe you 
intimated that you regard it as utterly reprehensible >— 
is commendable.’ Was it sarcasm that put a bite into 
the words? “Indeed,” he continued slowly, “I don’t 
like that story about ‘Red’ Poluskiani,”’ and his honesty 
here was apparent. “I’ve made a mental note of that 
case,—you keep in touch with it, too,—we don’t need to 
do that; but,’ and his voice hardened, “you wouldn’t 
have us go into this war blindfolded,—war is war. 
You killed men, perhaps women and children in inno- 
cent cities far behind the lines, for a cause. We are 
getting ready to fight, but, hear me, to fight in defense 
of our rights, our investments, our liberties. We're 


106 THE FURNACE 


not starting anything, but, by [again the oath] we 
are going to finish some things if others start them.” 

Frank was appalled at what he regarded as the utter 
inability of the man to see the issue, to comprehend the 
principle for which he had sought out the conference. 
He saw that he had failed utterly to convince the power- 
ful official that these under-cover methods were as abso- 
lute as Kaiserism, as wrong as autocracy, and in the 
long run, destroyers of morale, builders of hate; that 
they were enemies of the company’s best interests, and 
finally worse than futile. They might defeat a strike, 
but they could never win a peace. He was resigned to 
the fate of the interview, and committing himself to 
future developments, held his soul in leash to be de- 
livered at another time, while President Branson con- 
cluded. 

“After to-day I value you personally more than ever, 
—your manifest sincerity and your courage especially. 
All that I have written you and all that I have said 
stand. We need you, and, Judson,” turning now 
whimsically to the third member of the conference, who 
beyond his introductory words at the beginning had 
said nothing, “I begin to believe that the industry has a 
place for him that will bring the rest of us, hat in 
hand, to his desk—we wouldn’t want to lose you.”’ Was 
there the whisper of a threat in those last well-spoken 
words? 

As the Oldsburg officials went out, Mr. Branson 
called after them, “Oh, Judson, Brudidge wants to see 
you for just a minute; he ’phoned my secretary while 
we were busy.” 

It had of course been apparent at the opening of the 





THE FURNACE 107 


interview in the president’s office that the impromptu 
acrobatic exhibition of the preceding morning had not 
been a subject of conversation between Peter Brudidge 
and his superior, and when a little later Mr. Judson 
joined Colonel Frank for the ride back to the mills, he 
said: 

“Peter is running true to form. This morning he 
forgives and forgets,—he won’t mention it! But, be- 
lieve me, you're in for trouble some day or I have 
never sgen the face of the devil.”’ And there was undis- 
guised concern in the face of James Judson as he spoke. 

As for Malcolm, he was listening to a voice that 
said, “It has been a very wonderful morning, Colonel, 
—a very wonderful morning.” 


CHAPTER X 


HREE weeks after the interview in the head- 
quarters office of the company, on September 
toth, the great strike was called. In the meantime 
things had gone on as usual in the Oldsburg plant. Mal- 
colm continued his daily rounds; continued to strive 
for a better, a fuller, understanding, and for freer re- 
lationship with the men. While he made progress that 
heartened him, it was all too slow to satisfy him. The 
complete confidence now given him by Superintendent 
Judson, which was quickly reflected by the entire staff, 
was some compensation. He knew that a strike was 
impending ; that the men of the local plant were reluc- 
tant to joint it,—a striking testimony to the manage- 
ment. He knew that the men would lose,—knew it, 
because he had always known them, and because now he 
knew the power and resources of the company. 
Knowing what he did, with all the strength of his 
influence he worked to keep the men from “downing 
tools”; to serve the industry he worked? yes, but the 
men of it, first, their wives and their children. To 
strike now would mean immediate suffering and a long 
disaster. He saw the efforts of the hot-blooded, emo- 
tional trouble-makers,—saw much and sensed more; 
knew that a rising tide of restlessness was driving saner 
counsel before it, ahead of organization, financing and 


sound leadership. He groaned in his soul as he visioned 
108 


THE FURNACE 169 


the wreckage,—losses that all must suffer, with the 
helpless, as ever, drinking the dregs of the cup. 

Then came a subtle change in the attitude of head- 
quarters. For days he fought against a growing con- 
viction, but finally was compelled to acknowledge the 
fact. The Bancroft Steel Company no longer feared, 
no longer opposed, a strike,—it welcomed it, and by un- 
mistakable propaganda furthered the efforts of rash and 
headstrong leaders who incited the men to hasten the 
break. 

When this appalling situation opened out before the 
first assistant, a great anger laid hold on him. He 
raged before James Judson, only to hear that now 
generally silent man remind him of the compact 
entered into on that never-to-be-forgotten night in the 
library. 

Thus he went on. That he made progress was evi- 
denced by the fact that President Branson finally called 
him into his office to reveal to him there the grand 
strategy of the company. 

“The fight is on, Colonel,—we haven’t. made it, but 
now, by , we choose the field and name the time. 
Things are breaking right; it is their next move, but 
we have figured it out ahead of them, and: always they 
will find us one move ahead. You're too ‘good.’ Why, 
if we turned you loose, you’d break up the strike before 
it started, and we want it to start. Do you get me?” 

Malcolm “got” him, and nearly got him! But he was 
learning fast now, and kept his counsel. 

In the Oldsburg mill, however, not for an hour did 
he relax his efforts to save the company, the human part 
of it, from disaster. For weeks, or ever since his long 





rio THE FURNACE 


talks with Jasper Branson, he had watched “Red” 
Poluskiani carefully. There was nothing he could do, 
but watch. His heart bled for the man. He knew his 
body and mind-breaking burdens, and he trembled, 
too, for the poor dupe’s fate were his perfidy to be dis- 
covered by the workers. 

Through the sweltering summer weeks Malcolm took 
little recreation. Sometimes he felt that it was the 
Argonne over again, where, as he grimly expressed it 
to the superintendent one day, “I spent my vacation last 
year.” Save for one week-end trip to his parents, he 
was constantly in the dirt and smoke and heat—and 
hate—of the mill. 

Of Gene Stanton he saw much, but not enough. She 
came and went quietly. Her work was apparent in a 
hundred ways among the mill-town workers, but her 
mission, as her origin, was never quite revealed. She 
had come to spend ten days, President Branson had 
said to Mr. Judson, announcing her arrival, but the 
days had become weeks and the weeks were to run into 
months before she would leave. That there were some 
things about the young and beautiful settlement worker 
which were known to President Branson and Superin- 
tendent Judson, that he knew nothing about, Malcolm 
Frank was aware, but when nettled, and, as he knew, 
foolishly exasperated one day, he had taken his friend 
to task for not giving him all of the facts, that wise 
man of years had replied: 

“Tt’s a personal confidence, Malcolm, and, boy, don’t 
let your fancy play tricks with you—if it does, the 
tricks will play havoc and bring pain.” 

Of course there was nothing to be said after that. 


y 


THE FURNACE III 


Malcolm was the soul of honor, and when he knew 
that the matter lay in the plane of personal confidence, 
he was angry with himself for his asking. The tone in 
which his friend had spoken his cryptic warning, and 
his very apparent solicitude, disarmed him completely, 
when he was tempted to resent its personal and some- 
what embarrassing implications. But even so he saw as 
much of Gene Stanton as time and opportunity allowed, 
and as days drew on toward mid-September, and be- 
came more and more charged with expectant bitterness, 
he threw an extra guard about her. 

One evening he was called to the telephone by the 
maid after he had returned late and weary from the 
office. 

“Colonel Frank,” the voice on the line said,—a voice 
that always thrilled him, “could you give me an hour 
to-night? I have a family I want you to see,—here in 
Oldsburg.” 

Ten minutes later—and it is to be seriously doubted 
whether the distance has ever again been negotiated as 
quickly—Malcolm Frank was in the office of the 
Y.W.C.A. waiting for the speaker. As she greeted 
him, he noted the dark lines under her eyes; the droop 
of her shoulders; the drag of her step—and he was 
angry, angry with everything that troubled her, un- 
reasonably angry with mill and men and with him- 
self. But she silenced and rebuked his protest with a 
look before it was uttered, and in a perfectly imper- 
sonal tone told her story. 

“We are going to John Webber’s. You know him,” 
and Malcolm at once remembered John Webber as the 
roller who had eased his dog’s life in those first hard 


112 THE FURNACE 


days of his apprenticeship. “His little girl died of 
pneumonia this morning. He is frantic with grief. A 
woman can’t handle a man in such a crisis. I don’t 
know what you can do, but don’t you think, in such a 
case, the company, the ‘soul of it’ you talk about, should 
try to do something ?” 

Malcolm looked at his fair and eager questioner, and 
dimly conscious that she was grooming him for a new 
role; conscious, too, that “company comforter’? would 
sound like a “sick fish,’ as one of his old corporals 
used to say, answered her: 

“Yes, I do. You picked the wrong man, I’m afraid, 
but he’ll do his dead-level best,’ and she, remembering 
what that meant on the occasion of her first visit to his 
office, replied, ‘‘That will be quite enough, I am sure.” 
However, he failed to see any reason for the half smile 
that followed her answer. 

When they reached the home of John Webber, they 
found a dim light burning in the kitchen, and only the 
faint tapers of the church to dispute with the darkness 
in the combination dining-and-living room. ‘The 
mother sat by the small casket as the bitter-eyed father 
opened the door. 

At sight of Gene Stanton’s companion he started 
back in surprise. “You here,’ he said, “big kid?’— 
that had been his name in the pit. “What the : 
but the sight of the young woman stopped the first 
rush of profanity. 

“Yes, Webber, I’m here,” Frank broke in. “I wish 
I could help you. You helped me once, a lot. Man, 
I'll never forget it. I wish that I could do as much 
for you now.” 





THE FURNACE 113 


The evident sincerity of the speaker, his calling up 
of the other’s friendship, and his simple frankness in 
his helplessness, completely disarmed John Webber. 
His voice broke, as, with an attitude completely changed, 
he cried from the anguish of his soul: 

“Man! not even God can help me now. The kid 
is gone, and I never knew her. Right now I ought to 
be at work,—and might as well be,—it doesn’t matter. 
My chance is gone. Half the time while she slept, I 
worked, and half the time while I slept she played,— 
and, God! it kills me to remember, when her laughter 
woke me, I cursed her,—but, man! I didn’t mean it. 
I was dead,—dead with the heat and the fumes, dead 
with the hours and the days after days, dead in my 
head and my heart. Now I’m alive again, and she’s 
gone,—and I never knew her. There wasn’t a chance.” 

He brought both of his great, black, twisted hands 
down upon the shoulders of the assistant superintend- 
ent until they shook that mighty frame as some oak 
tree is shaken by a storm, and he thundered on: 

“Wages be damned! I’ve had the best in the mill, but 
what did they buy me?—this ache in my heart, this 
hell in my house! I’m going out with the ‘hunkies,’ ”’ 
he roared, so beside himself that he utterly forgot that 
one of his hearers was officially, at least, one of the 
“enemy, ’—‘“going out with the ‘hunkies’ to fight for 
a man’s chance to know his kids.” 

Never in the presence of death, even when it came 
like thunder down the plains of war, had Malcolm 
Frank looked upon such elemental agony. Responding 
to something within him that broke as breaks a leash 
that holds an untamed lion, he threw his arms about 


114 THE FURNACE 


the shoulders of the distracted father, lifted him from 
his feet, crushed him until it seemed that his chest must 
break, and whispered, with an undescribable passion: 
“Fight! John Webber. Fight!” 

The shock of the physical contact with the young 
giant seemed to quiet the roller; he sank into a chair 
and for the first time in the long, hard years of his 
manhood he wept. Silently Malcolm Frank stood 
above him,—softly Gene Stanton withdrew, and so it 
was that the assistant superintendent presently walked 
home alone. 

Later in the evening as he talked with James Judson, 
he said, “No organization in the United States has a 
right to allow men to work as men work in steel. For 
the good of the race and for the sake of the flag, if 
they want to do it they should be stopped.’”’ And to this 
James Judson made no audible reply. 

Early in the morning, before there was any chance 
that Gene Stanton could have started on her rounds, 
Malcolm appeared at the office of the Y.W.C.A. When 
the one he was looking for approached, he greeted her 
with a half bantering request: “I went with you last 
night, and you deserted me. Now I ask that to atone 
for the past, you give me an hour to-day.” 

She laughed without embarrassment and replied, “Of 
course I'll give you the hour if you’ll come with me. 
IT run on schedule, you know. The round this morning 
is here in Oldsburg, and it is a long one.” Malcolm 
suddenly discovered that his own plan to take Miss 
Stanton through the blast furnace section of the mill, 
where “Red” Poluskiani worked, could easily wait; 
that what he wanted was the chance to be with this 


THE FURNACE 115 


settlement-worker who so stirred him, and so they went 
out together. 

Gene Stanton in her work had been a law unto her- 
self. That she had the backing of the company was 
generally known; this very fact for a time handicapped 
her. The homes of the laborers were suspicious, and 
in some instances unfriendly. But quietly she had gone 
on weeks beyond the limits first set for her stay, as has 
been written, ministering with her heart and her hands 
like an angel of mercy, until now she had won a way, 
her way, into the confidence and love of hundreds. 
They called her ‘fair woman,’’—not because of her 
hair, which was as dark as her eyes,—perhaps it was 
her face, high-colored and radiant, or perhaps it was 
the soul of her that sang in her voice and played in her 
smile. 

On this day she was visiting babies, new babies, help- 
less bits of humanity that, whatever their racial origin, 
wailed in the universal language of infancy. The 
assistant superintendent carried the medicine-case with 
all the accessories and waited outside the door,—for 
generally, that day, one room served as nursery, living 
room and kitchen,—while the nurse of the morning 
completed her task. 

At last they came to a familiar street again after 
having been in a portion of Oldsburg that even Mal- 
colm had not known. And to his surprise they stopped 
at the door of the Shuskies. ‘‘What! it isn’t—” and 
Gene Stanton finished the sentence, “possible? Yes— 
Mrs. Shuskie’s seventh baby came yesterday. A 
tragedy it is, too,—nothing less.” 

Knowing the house, Frank followed Miss Stanton 


116 THE FURNACE 


across the threshold and waited in one of the two 
down-stairs rooms while she ministered to the mother 
and child in the other. He found four of the roomers, 
men who occupied the attic that only a few years before 
had housed him, playing cards on the half of the living- 
room table that had been cleared of its day-old dishes,— 
dishes that his intuition told him Gene Stanton would 
wash presently. One of the men recognized the as- 
sistant superintendent, and immediately the group be- 
came silent. 

Frank waited for an interval, and then tried to open 
a sort of kill-time conversation, while he impatiently 
watched the door between the rooms. Addressing him- 
self to one of the men he knew had only recently ar- 
rived from the old country, he queried, “Well, how 
do you like America?” and the fellow, startled at first 
to hear the “boss” speak in his language, replied, 
simply, “I don’t know, sir—I have not yet seen it.” 

For many a day this soldier of the war that some 
nations fought to make a world, wracked by fears and 
well-nigh wrecked, safe for democracy, was to remem- 
ber that answer. Often it was to crowd into his think- 
ing when he longed to be at ease in his mind. The 
appalling fact that men,—men new to the land he loved 
and half died for ; men coming with hope in their hearts 
as his father had come, should live in her cities, work 
in her mills, slave in her pits, to die there, or to return 
whence they came, broken and embittered,—that these 
men should so come, and so stay, and so go, without 
seeing her, robbed him of sleep and left trouble for 
peace in his mind. 

When Gene Stanton came out, the lodgers had re- 


THE FURNACE 117 


tired, and so the assistant superintendent of the Olds- 
burg mills escaped running the risk of losing caste with 
the men of the plant, for in spite of the young woman’s 
protests, he insisted upon wiping the dishes that she 
washed. 

On the way back to Miss Stanton’s lodgings, Malcolm 
Frank was generally silent, unless spoken to,—in fact, 
he said so little that when abruptly he turned to his 
companion with the invitation, “Miss Stanton, I wish 
that you would run down to a little coal town in Ohio 
with me next Sunday,—the town where my parents 
live. It’s different,—there are mountains about it, 
green and restful; it is dirty and mean, but it touches 
the sky in spots. We could be back for your Vespers if 
we started at seven,’ she nearly collapsed, and literally 
did drop everything she carried—extra packages she 
had refused to surrender to her escort. Malcolm hav- 
ing exploded his bomb, one that ten minutes before it 
“let loose’ he had no dream of ever using, was glad 
for a chance to “take cover.” He spent the rest of the 
day (or so it seemed to the waiting young woman) 
in gathering together her scattered parcels. But it also 
gave her time to recover, and when at last her escort 
stood erect, to walk “like a man,” she answered: 

“T’m sorry, but I’m leaving for New York to- 
morrow,—to-morrow night. I’ve overstayed and my 
people are up in arms. President Branson came to see 
me last evening,—that was why I left you so hurriedly, 
—that was one reason,” her innate honesty would not 
sanction the half truth. ‘He practically ordered me 
out,’ she laughed, “so I’m leaving. There’s a house 
party at our place,—over Sunday. Thank you, Colonel 


118 THE FURNACE 


Frank, very much for the invitation,—and for your 
kindness and for the wonderful time,—the very won- 
derful time’ (Was Gene Stanton laughing at him? 
His distracted eyes would not let him see her clearly) 
“vou have helped make possible since I came.” 

They were at her door now. She gave him her hand, 
and then, following some intuition, she waited—long 
years afterwards she was to remember that she waited. 
Malcolm looked down upon her and said, with the calm 
of a great conviction, ““You’re coming back.” 


CHAPTER XI 


UT Gene Stanton did not return, for she did not 

go away. The next morning the strike was called, 

and that night the “Limited” pulled out with an un- 

occupied drawing-room—strange, too, that a settle- 

ment worker, even a very beautiful one, should have 

had so elaborate a reservation made for her,—and by 

the President of the Bancroft Steel Company, who came 

to the city ticket office in person. But strange happen- 
ings are the order of these disturbed social times. 

As for Gene Stanton, she asked no one’s consent 
when, after reading the morning paper, she suddenly 
changed her plans. ‘The telegram that went under 
another name than that of Gene Stanton, to an address 
on Long Island, was convincing, though quite unsatis- 
factory to the one who received it. 

In the office of the Oldsburg Mills all was confusion 
when the two superintendents came in after the general 
conference at headquarters. Later things settled down 
to the old routine, for the clerical staff was not dis- 
turbed by the strike, and, indeed, was practically unani- 
mous against it. James Judson went at once to his 
desk, but his associate turned to the furnaces after 
reassuring the stenographers and clerks. 

Here he found a few stragglers, company pen- 
sioners and guards. The rollers and other high-salaried 
laborers who had in only a few instances gone out, 
notably that of John Webber, were at their homes, hav- 

119 


‘ 
120 THE FURNACE 


ing been released on call until the badly shaken organi- 
zation could be put into running order again. 

Frank was grimly quiet as he went on. The thing 
had happened. The end of another period in his life 
was soon at hand. He felt the grip of fate upon him. 
Already he knew that much of his sympathy was with 
the strikers, with that part of the organization, as he 
expressed it to himself, that had gone out. But how 
to translate that sympathy into action he did not know. 
He felt keenly the unwisdom of the step the workers 
had taken—its untimeliness. He knew, or thought that 
he did, they were headed for defeat. But how should 
he serve the immediate moment? 

One thing he was sure of,—his compact with James 
Judson. He knew that he would stand by the side of 
his superintendent, knew that though they had not 
spoken, their hearts were as one. He thought of Bruce 
Jayne, and wished for an hour with his discerning 
spirit—they had not seen each other since the short 
evening when Bruce had dropped off en route home 
from Oberlin, and that had been just before Gene 
Stanton came. How he dated everything back to her 
arrival! He knew, too, that all things for him would 
forever be waiting her return, but he did not know that 
she was still in the immediate vicinity ! 

He had come at last to the far end of the great en- 
closure, surrounded by a barbed wire, balconied fence. 
The bridge kept by “Deeds” Shuski was immediately in 
front of him,—deserted. As he remembered his con- 
versation there of weeks before, and looked up once 
more to the wire, he seemed in one mighty leap to have 
landed again in the old, red-running fields of war. And 


THE FURNACE 121 


as war he accepted the challenge,—war for men and 
not against them. 

He turned to retrace his steps, but as he did so, he 
found his way blocked by “Red” Poluskiani. The man 
was a hulking picture of abject misery—that the assist- 
ant superintendent knew of his relation to the depart- 
ment of Peter Brudidge, he had of course not been 
informed, but something in the attitude of the young 
officer for weeks past had given him a growing feel- 
ing of confidence when in his presence,—a confidence 
that was like a restful haven to his uneasy, tortured 
soul. Like a whipped and hopeless cur he came now. 

“Superintendent,” he said, “I’ve got to talk or die,” 
and talk he did. In broken English he talked. Through 
blinding tears he talked; incoherently, unceasingly, he 
talked. Until he became half maudlin, Frank made no 
effort to stop him, but when he was rapidly approach- 
ing a state of complete mental collapse, the younger 
man broke into his misery. 

“Red, take a brace; take a brace for the kids you 
sold your honor to feed—I know all about it. I’ve 
known it for weeks. God knows you are as foul as 
you've said; God knows, too, the ones who are worse, 
but what are you going to do now?” , 

The man shook his head and was silent for an in- 
terval. Then he replied, “I can’t go out, for they’ve 
got the goods on me. I’m marked; for days [ve been 
feeling it coming ; guess they let me get by until now to 
cover their plans, but last night ‘Deeds’ Shuski came 
down and said casual-like, ‘Better kiss the kids good-by 
and hang up in the mill to-morrow night—I smell dead 
men.’ ‘Deeds’ never forgot that I lifted a thousand 


122 THE FURNACE 


pounds of scrap off’n his legs. So I’m here,—inside,— 
to stay until they get me. But, God! Superintendent, 
what am I going to do about the kids?” 

And then Malcolm Frank began the great war. “T’ll 
look after the kids. You keep your red knob out of 
sight.” The giant worker crumpled, a groveling heap, 
on the cinders, and kissed the boots of the man who 
had spoken. | 

Events for the next few days followed each other 
in rapid succession and in kaleidoscopic fashion. First 
came the state troops, spick and span in well-kept uni- 
forms and on well-groomed steeds; beardless lads, 
generally, a trifle nervous at first, but eager and well- 
meaning; victims of orders, and of the system that 
called them, if their coming was a mistake. Their pres- 
ence was resented by the strikers, of course. They 
stood for the protection of the things these too-often 
blindly-led blind were trying to make terms with,— 
their own terms. They represented the authority of 
power,—power that thus far had not dealt kindly. 

There were minor clashes in the streets,—not as 
many in Oldsburg at the first as elsewhere, for the 
generous policy of the administration of James Judson 
had done its work well and could not quickly be for- 
gotten. But gradually a deep animosity developed in 
the breasts of the strikers, and a bitterness that equaled 
it took possession of the sinewy hands of the troopers 
who had automatics within quick reach and sharp-shod 
hoofs beneath them. As Malcolm drove to the office 
one morning, he was passed by a member of the con- 
stabulary who carried a jagged brick-bat wound over 


THE FURNACE 123 


his eye, and the limp body of the lad who had hurled 
it over his pommel. 

There were injunctions that choked the courts, and 
wild stories in the press,—the press of the great city 
that told little more than what the great industry dic- 
tated or inspired. Malcolm stopped reading the papers 
until, remembering what Brant had said about the New 
York Universal, and hoping to get the news that even 
to a man in his position was unavailable in home dai- 
lies, he sent in a mail-order subscription. 

But when a court handed down a decision that barred 
strikers from holding street meetings, after they had 
been shut out of every hall and public common of the 
town, he could not longer remain silent. Straight to 
James Judson he went. “Read this,—no, I'll read it,” 
he said, and he read, word for word, the decision that 
declared no man had an inherent right to do anything 
more than walk in a public thoroughfare! That closed 
absolutely the way to public assemblage for thousands 
of law-abiding members of society. 

“There go your last civil liberties,’ Judson’s asso- 
ciate cried, “into the lap of ‘big business,’ into the hands 
of ‘selfish interest,’ under the orders of the industry, 
this industry we serve. I’ve tried to be true to the 
words of the book I found on my father’s knee. [I fol- 
lowed the vision he conjured to France and back again; 
but, James Judson, it has gone on ahead of me now. 
Don’t, don’t, for God’s sake, don’t ask me to lose it 
forever!” And James Judson replied, ““You’ll not lose 
it,—hold steady; this is a war, not a battle.’ And so 
he stood fast and waited. 


124 THE FURNACE 


He had not forgotten his promise to “Red” Polus- 
kiani. Of Gene Stanton’s change of plans he knew 
nothing, and for two weeks after the strike began she 
was completely occupied with her work in other centers 
of the company’s territory,—so completely, in fact, that 
she had temporarily abandoned her lodgings in Olds- 
burg. But Malcolm Frank had transferred an assistant 
housekeeper from the Judson establishment to the 
wreck of a house in which the steel worker’s seven 
children lived; had doubled her wages, paying the 
difference out of his own salary, and had given her in- 
structions to ‘‘mother those motherless kids,” as she 
would have mothered her own had they survived the 
diphtheria,—and mother them she did. 

As the first assistant thanked his superior who had 
been as eager to fall in with the whole plan as Malcolm 
had been in making it, he added, ‘“Doesn’t it grind you 
to work at this end of that proposition? Looking after 
those youngsters now when it’s too late, when somehow 
we should have looked after them before by saving 
their father? Perhaps by saving their mother? What 
is the company problem of wages alongside of that?” 
And James Judson had answered his young associate 
nothing. 

The next day, just at the turn of the shifts, Malcolm 
Frank awoke to the fact that Gene Stanton was still in 
his immediate vicinity. As he stood at the window of 
the outer office, watching the little group of men go 
straggling through the guarded gates, silently com- 
menting upon the change that had come upon the busy 
place in a few hectic days, his quick eye caught a puff 
of white smoke that rose in an unfolding ball above the - 


THE FURNACE 125 


high fence at the far end of the mill property, and im- 
mediately the casings and doors rattled with the force 
of an explosion that smote upon his ears like the de- 
tonation of a heavy hand grenade of the ‘‘offensive” 
variety. In another flash he was at the head of a 
group of workers who rushed down the switching 
tracks toward the point of commotion. 

Seconds before they reached it, they were able to 
appraise its disaster: the drawbridge was wrecked, 
the keeper’s house was in ruins, and there, as they 
came closer, lay the mangled form of what had 
been “Red” Poluskiani, broken upon the twisted girders 
and shattered timbers—scattered across the smoking 
cinders. The crimson line of his lips was set to the 
death-agony of his blackened face. Malcolm stripped 
off his coat and dropped it over the bloody ruin. Turn- 
ing to issue an order, he faced Gene Stanton; in her 
eyes was a look of utter horror. 

“You!” he cried. ‘You here? My God! how did 
you come?” and she answered, as one in a trance, “I— 
I could not leave.” She swayed, and as she would have 
fallen, he caught her up and, as a man who walks with 
death in his arms through a tortured heaven, bore her 
back to the office. Leaving her there with the company 
nurse, he returned to the grewsome scene of disaster. 

At a distance he sensed a change; added disorder was 
apparent; men passed him, carrying a canvas-covered 
burden, but new figures strode through the smoldering 
débris, and by the edge of the draw-bridge pit stood 
Peter Brudidge, his right hand holding at near arm’s 
length the figure of a senseless man, a peg-legged man, 
upon whose face and head he rained blow on blow with 


126 THE FURNACE 


t 


his powerful left fist. It was only the instinct of blind 
rage that sent Malcolm Frank to that black throat, and 
that tore the bleeding body of “Deeds” Shuski from 
that brutal grip. Then, like very devils, the perfect 
haters faced each other. 

“You!” Brudidge cried, “you—traitor!’’ and aimed 
a blow full at Frank’s face. It did not land, and be- 
fore its brother could be found, strong arms bore the 
two apart. Again the feud between them waited on the 
slowly turning wheel of fate. Peter Brudidge was be- 
side himself ; he roared his nameless blasphemy and like 
a beast gone mad struggled in the iron hands of those 
who restrained him. The assistant superintendent, with 
his back upon the spectacle, watched the slow return to 
semi-consciousness of his former employee. The blood 
was swabbed from Shuski’s nostrils and eyes; his cloth- 
ing was loosened, and his half-crushed chest was sup- 
ported upon blankets brought hastily from the inside 
sleeping quarters of the company guards. 

In the meantime Malcolm was told the story of what 
had happened during his absence. Having apparently 
hidden behind a huge pile of pig iron, just before the 
explosion, immediately after the catastrophe ‘‘Deeds” 
had been discovered in the act of scaling the fence; he 
was slightly wounded and appeared dazed from the 
shock. As the guards who made the capture hauled 
‘him back into the enclosure, he had cried, ‘Too late! 
Too late!” apparently wild with terror at his failure to 
escape. 

Just at this moment Peter Brudidge had rushed, 
cursing, upon the scene, and, taking in the situation at 
once, had snatched the half-dead prisoner from his cap- 


THE FURNACE 127 


tors and begun his murderous attack. That the victim 
of the Brudidge jungle methods was guilty of some 
vital part in the successful plot against the life of “Red” 
was of course taken for granted. But when a little 
later Superintendent Frank told what he knew, repeat- 
ing his earlier conversation with the murdered man, and 
when this was still later supplemented by the testimony 
of Shuski, who whispered of the despairing, desperate 
effort he had made to warn his former “buddie” of the 
bomb, but who, with his last breath, steadfastly refused 
to reveal the perpetrators of the crime, the misdirection 
of Peter Brudidge’s insane rage was fully established. 

While Brudidge was taken into custody on the tech- 
nical charge of homicide, he was released at once, and 
for reasons which will appear later never came before 
a mortal bar of justice. There was no doubt, however, 
in the minds of the spectators who watched the agony- 
written face of Malcolm Frank, as he told his story, and 
who remembered the might with which he had hurled 
himself upon the “black killer,” as Brudidge had already 
come to be called,—no uncertainty at all as to what the 
testimony of the first assistant superintendent of the 
Oldsburg mills would be when stern justice called the 
roll in the name of “Deeds” Shuski, the cripple, and his 
seven fatherless children. 

But even the dark happenings of the immediate 
present could not efface from Malcolm’s mind the mem- 
ory of the white face of Gene Stanton as he left her on 
the emergency cot in the company’s office, and as soon 
as the compulsion of the tragedy permitted, he hastened 
to the office. Gene Stanton was gone, nor did a call 
at her old lodgings locate her. Eagerly, and then 


128 THE FURNACE : 


frantically, he canvassed the city to find her, but with- 
out success. Not until morning was his agony of sus- 
pense lifted. Then a letter was delivered to him by 
one of “Deeds” Shuski’s children. It read: 

“My dear Colonel Frank: Forgive me for leaving— 
again! but this time I had even a better reason. Mary 
Shuski needed me. I spent the night with her. You 
will pardon my intruding and my changing your 
plan,—your generous plan,—but for the time being at 
least, the two families will strengthen each other, and ~ 
so both are now together. It makes a very pathetic 
orphans’ home, and the woman from Mr. Judson’s es- 
tablishment is a wonderful matron. 

“Pardon my weakness yesterday, and thank you. I 
am unspeakably ashamed and humiliated. I am quite 
myself again, and will be very busy. I will call at the 
office when I return.” And then as Malcolm’s eyes 
dropped to the closing sentence, it seemed to him that 
something on the page beyond the vision of any eyes 
to see leaped up to him, laid hold upon him. The 
words were natural enough under the circumstances: 

“They have told me all,—James Judson will be very 
proud and grateful, and all of us will rejoice with him 
because so great a shame was not allowed to rest, un- 
rebuked, upon the company,—but be very careful, for 
the way before us is, I fear, very long. Sincerely and 
gratefully, Gene Stanton.” 

A divine dissatisfaction was that letter, but from it 
there was no appeal, and so, not knowing where her 
path of ministry had led her, he stood by, worked on, 
and—waited. 


CILLA LMR ALT 


D AILY, hourly, local conditions became more acute. 

The presence of the constabulary was a constant 
irritant, and the refusal to the strikers of practically 
every legitimate method of open protest and expression 
a source of growing menace. The difference between 
the Oldsburg atmosphere and that of other company 
towns was no longer apparent. Thus quickly the work 
of James Judson was carried down by the rushing tide 
of class and partisan hate. 

At the strikers’ store, where an ever-increasing 
crowd came for relief rations, men with furtive glances 
and fearing constantly that their words would come to 
unfriendly ears, talked of their wrongs, boasted of the 
anticipated triumph, and told impossible stories of huge 
accessions to their ranks in other places,—always in 
other places. 

John Webber, grim and silent, stood behind the coun- 
ter, and with two assistants handed out the orders 
which were filled on requisitions supplied to the heads 
of families by the strike committee. His lot was a 
particularly hard one, for he had broken with his class; 
he had gone out with the “hunkies,” and as time wore 
on, and the fighting lines were more tightly drawn, he 
was made to feel the bitterness of his decision in a 
hundred ways and places. Boys jeered him on the 
street of the business district; he was the first striker 

129 


130 THE FURNACE 


to receive notice of ejection from a company-owned 
house; his wife was “cut dead” by her former friends, 
and morning after morning he woke to find notes of 
intimidation and revilement shoved under his door 
or plastered over his windows. One night a barrage 
of stones was laid down upon his porch, and a little 
later the thin panels of his front door were smashed by 
heavy missiles. 

Nor were the passions of the strikers idle. Loyal 
workers in spite of their company protection were as- 
saulted as they went and came from work; women 
fought in the unkempt streets. Every now and then 
troopers under the sting of the epithet ‘Cossacks,’ 
would ride down a sidewalk group, and one night two 
of them, pursuing a shadowy figure that had let fly with 
a handful of gravel, charged into a rooming-house 
entrance and trampled half to death a woman with her 
child. Thus the innocent suffered with the guilty. — 

Nor did Malcolm Frank escape the dregs of the cup. 
More and more his old friends looked upon him with 
suspicion. Silence now greeted him when he passed 
among the men,—a sinister silence. As to his com- 
pany associates, of James Judson only was he sure, and 
when he thought of him he was greatly troubled, for 
nearer and nearer he approached the conviction that 
his benefactor was suffering and would suffer increas- 
ingly because of the distrust with which he himself 
was more and more regarded. Peter Brudidge was 
doing his work, doing it slowly, craftily, thoroughly. 
But the first assistant superintendent knew that the 
trail had no turning; that it led straight ahead; that it 
‘was again as it had been with the war,—“‘the only way 


THE FURNACE 131 


out is the way through,” and so he went steadfastly 
about the “company’s business.” 

When the order came down dispersing two or more 
men standing together on the street in conversation,— 
the order to “keep them moving,’—Malcolm went to 
the superintendent with a quiet protest,—and his pro- 
tests were more quietly voiced, though not less posi- 
tively, as the strike entered more and more upon its 
sterner periods. 

“We are wrong, Superintendent,—absolutely wrong, 
if this is America and if we still live under the Consti- 
tution, to ‘anticipate possible trouble’ by continuing to 
abridge, to destroy civil liberty. There has been no 
trouble with those groups,—they were about the only 
safety valve the strikers had left. We act as though 
we had to shut liberty up to keep her, when history and 
all human experience teach that, bind and gag her, and 
she will go mad. Release her, direct her, and slowly, 
perhaps, but surely, she will find her way. I’ve been 
silent for days in the face of this growing folly. I saw 
public assembly thrown to the discard because of fear 
and without the semblance of a real reason for doing 
so. I choked my dissent when the court closed the 
street to democracy and freedom. But I am bound to 
speak now, unless you command against it, and J ask 
you not to do that.” 

James Judson turned his now drawn and tired face 
away when he answered, but he said, “I have no com- 
mands for you, Malcolm. Do as you see fit.” 

The next day there was a storm in the general offices 
when Colonel Frank’s courteously worded but incisive 
protest against what he termed the “serious and un- 


132 THE FURNACE 


warranted abridgment of civil liberties’? came under 
the eye of President Branson. ‘There is no record of 
what he said, but there is no secret now about what he 
wrote in reply,—dictated hours after his first outburst. 
Jasper Branson was no fool. The statement of the 
head of the Bancroft Steel Company was, if a trifle 
caustic, nevertheless courteous and considerate,—the 
latter because of the admittedly grave possibility 
that lay in too serious a disagreement with the first 
assistant superintendent at the Oldsburg Mills over the 
particular question now raised as an issue. 

“You learned in a hard school that war is war,—hell, 
I believe a great and loyal American once called it. I 
admire again your frankness, but let me be equally 
frank and say that I question now your judgment. 
Would you have suggested speeches by the enemy in 
front of your lines in France?—unmolested propa- 
ganda for the ears of your soldiers, and with a battle 
in progress? Would you have waited until some se- 
cretly planned attack had actually been launched before 
taking precautions against it? Colonel, we appreciate 
what you have done and are doing for the company, 
but you have seen how quickly the humane and gener- 
ous policies of a man like James Judson are forgotten 
by those who have benefited by them. Now is the time 
for us to put into our spirit some of the metal this 
company produces. Don’t weaken. Cordially yours, 
Jasper Branson. 

“P.S. Iam sending this by special messenger. To- 
morrow at nine a.m. there is to be a conference in my 
office. Stephen B. Price of Caxton, a special secretary © 
attached to the Chamber of Commerce there, who has 


THE FURNACE 133 


had quite a record in several cities for straightening out 
difficulties between capital and labor, and who is indi- 
rectly related to our organization, has been invited to 
address our superintendents and general officers. As 
of course you know, practically all the men in Caxton 
have gone back to work. This, by the way, is no ‘news- 
paper story.’ Come along with Superintendent Jud- 
son.” 

When Malcolm Frank read that letter, he just about 
despaired of ever bringing Branson to see the difference 
between an enemy and a partner or of helping the com- 
pany Branson led to stop making enemies out of part- 
ners. 

After dispatching the above letter, the president 
called Peter Brudidge to his desk. There had been a 
marked coolness in the attitude of Mr. Branson toward 
his master sleuth since that worthy’s fatal outbreak at 
Oldsburg,—a killing of that kind could not be kept 
under cover, could not be convincingly explained, when 
company guards and an organization official refused to 
condone it. Besides, Jasper Branson was not a “killer.” 
As he saw it, he could not discharge Brudidge and avoid 
weakening company morale, but his enthusiasm for the 
man was cooled, and he called him now, only because 
he had gone so far in his under-cover program with the 
fellow, that he was embarrassed to the point where it 
was impossible for him to turn back. 

“Mr. Brudidge,” he said, with no attempt to hide his 
aversion, “Judson and Frank need help at Oldsburg— 
need it more than they know.” And he eyed the uneasy 
man before him as he emphasized the last words of his 
sentence. “Send your best men down there,—no rough 


134 THE FURNACE 


stuff; you understand,” and he went on ominously, 
“there’s been too much of that already. I want 
‘whispering corporals’ and ‘silent watchers,—and I 
want you to keep on keeping away, but I want results. 
Get the facts at Oldsburg,” and he stood up as he fin- 
ished, and spoke his concluding words with a half- 
growl under his breath, ‘—all the facts.” | 

Peter Brudidge had paled under the whip-lash of his 
superior’s words. Fear and hatred joined now in per- 
fect blending on his face as he said with the candor 
that cunning never uses until desperate: 

“Mr. President, if you mean that last, you mean 
Frank, and if you mean Frank, you mean that I go to 
Oldsburg,—myself. I have too much at stake to queer 
the game again’ (Had Bronson known the stakes he 
would have destroyed him before he would have given 
him his way.), “too much at stake,” he hissed, “and let 
me stake my life on this now,” he went on, “Frank will 
break with the company, will betray it to the ‘Reds’; 
will hurt it for years, whatever happens to this strike,— 
unless you stop him,—stop him quick.”’ 

The president never liked Peter Brudidge less than 
he liked him then, but never believed him more. He did 
not betray a single emotion that stirred him, however, 
as he brusquely concluded the unsavory interview by 
snapping out, “You heard me,—I hold you accountable 
for results. That’s all.” There were to be results 
a-plenty. 

The next morning at nine o’clock the president’s 
room at the general offices was comfortably filled when 
Mr. Branson introduced Stephen Price of the Caxton 





THE FURNACE 135 


Chamber of Commerce, and that manifestly self-satis- 
fied individual plunged at once into the heart of his 
subject: 

“Gentlemen,” said he, “you came to hear a story 
and I came to tell one. Six thousand men went out; 
not many less than that went back, because—”’ and here 
began a long but snappily told story of the compulsion 
of power, power organized, financed and splendidly led. 
Power administered legally but ruthlessly. Power laid 
down upon a disorganized babel, a many-tongued mass 
of ignorant foreigners. 

For an hour Malcolm Frank sat under the spell of the 
slender, black mustached wizard of the practical psy- 
chology of mob control. There was no bitterness in the 
speaker’s voice; rather there was in it the disinterested, 
detached satisfaction of a specialist who has demon- 
strated a scientific formula. Colonel Frank followed 
him with the unconscious appreciation of a trained 
mind. 

Then, as in an instant, the man from Caxton changed. 
So immersed had he become in the tides of the matter 
immediately before him that he had forgotten his sur- 
roundings and the reason for his appearance in that 
group, his presence in the midst of that industrial coun- 
cil of war. Now he remembered only the logic of his 
proposition and its inexorable conclusion. As one who 
has suffered an overwhelming disappointment, who has 
just missed his triumph, or rather, as one who has been 
compelled to take something less than what he planned, 
bargained and paid for, he concluded: 

“Six thousand men went out; six thousand men, 


136 THE FURNACE 


hardly less, went back,—but how did they go?” He 
paused introspectively and whispered. “They went back 
with hate in their hearts.” 

The conclusion was a mental riot. President Bran- 
son looked as though he would like to throw the orator 
of the occasion into the street, but the first man to re- 
capture his tongue was Colonel Frank. He said only 
one word—almost he barked it. “Why?” he asked, and 
Stephen Price, still in the clouds of his academic dis- 
sertation, replied: 

“Because we were too strong to be sane; too eager 
to win a strike and too blind to win a peace. Because 
we paid so great a price for what we got, that when 
we got it we were bankrupt. Because we were too 
sure of ourselves to be sure of those strikers, and so 
we whipped them and lost them, and now, as sure as 
the principles that hold for human relationship are 
fundamentally the same with ‘hunkies’ and with 
native-born, fundamentally the same whether in iron 
or in. coal, we must make bricks without straw,—or, 
pardon me, steel with a combination of heats that isn’t 
good for the metal,—the heat of the furnace and the 
whiter heat of men’s hate.”’ 

These last words had come from the Caxton secre- 
tary like a flood. His eagerness was a passion now— 
the passion of a man who feels himself personally 
wronged, and he rushed on, “Look at my broken test- 
tube, my ruined demonstration. The night those men 
went out I urged the company in the first conference 
with the local officials to swear in deputies from among 
the strikers. I said, ‘Take only known good citizens; 
fathers of families, and deputize them to keep order.’ 


THE FURNACE 137 


There was no threat in the air then,—that bunch was 
like a huge picnic-crowd in the first good-natured relief 
of a vacation. As I studied the situation I knew that 
they would go back—that we could lead them back as 
from a holiday.” 

Now the speaker almost wept as he exclaimed, ‘We 
had the prettiest chance for a perfect experiment in 
industrial psychology this country ever saw, but we 
shut the light off in the laboratory, dismissed the 
classes, and went down to the mud-lot for a free-for-all. 
We sent guards with guns,—and the guns went off. 
Some folks were shot! The mills were stoned! Then 
the militia came—” 

But that sentence was never finished. From the 
street below out of which sounds of a growing dis- 
turbance had come at intervals all through the morning, 
rose a mighty roar lifted by a thousand maddened men. 
Every one in that room leaped for the great window. 
President Branson, whose amazement had held him as- 
tounded and dazed in his chair, had just risen violently 
to interrupt the speaker when the more sinister inter- 
ruption intervened. He reached the window first. 
Those nearest him caught a fleeting glimpse of milling 
workers battling with the police: then—‘Damn the 
‘Reds,’ ”’ thundered the purpling president of steel, as 
he drove the raised window hard into its sill. 

“Yes,” fairly shrieked the little man from Caxton, 
livid with academic rage at the interruption, and still 
dead to the ominous realities about him, “Yes, damn the 
‘Reds,’ and shut the window—but—’” 

But the Bancroft Steel Company had shaken off 
its coma, and for the next five or ten minutes its Presi- 


138 THE FURNACE 


dent gave as complete a demonstration of chagrin and 
wrath as has ever been seen in a room of conference. 
It must be admitted that with three exceptions he had 
a sympathetic audience. Stephen Price, who came out 
of his stupor with a bang when Branson in his rage 
called him “a fool,” a “traitor,” and told him that he 
would ‘“double-cross his grandmother,” seemed at first 
about to “crawl,” but suddenly went into “reverse.” 
He turned his back on his astonished subsidizer and 
walking at one and the same time from the office and 
out of his moral bondage. Soon after, under cover of 
the barrage laid down by the superintendents to relieve 
the discomfiture of their superior, James Judson and his 
associate withdrew. Their withdrawal, you may be 
sure, was not finally overlooked. 


CHAPTER XIII 


OR some reason Malcolm Frank did not feel in- 
clined to talk on the way out to the Oldsburg mills. 

As for Superintendent Judson, it had been weeks since 
he had opened any conversation with his associate that 
related to controversial matters of the strike. Neither 
of the silent men in the company car could avoid the 
startling, the embarrassing, implications of the con- 
clusions of the absent-minded specialist in the human- 
ities, who had been carried so completely away by the 
logic of his own “laboratory experiment,” but neither 
cared for the moment to pursue the matter any farther. 

Perhaps there would have been time and disposition 
to stir the mixture in that crucible of surprise again 
when they reached the office had Gene Stanton not been 
waiting for them. She was sitting in the chair of the 
assistant superintendent when they came in, and start- 
ing up, she stood once more at the end of the desk where 
Malcolm had first laid startled eyes upon her radiant 
loveliness. He had scarcely time to remark her burn- 
ing eyes and flushed face when she began speaking in 
a voice that reassured them at once, for he perceived 
that the fires consuming her were not those of any 
physical fever. 

“Superintendent Judson,” she said, in a voice con- 
trolled with apparent difficulty,—a voice hurt, impa- 
tient, angry,—and with an indefinable gesture that 
swept both men into the intimate circle of the conver- 

139 


140 THE FURNACE 


sation, “Mr. Judson, when is this to stop?” She did not 
hesitate, did not wait for, nor expect, an answer. 
“When is this crime against women and children and 
men to cease? When is it to stop, I say? When are 
you going to put a stop to it? 

“Two hours ago I came here, ran here, thinking that 
in these offices I might speak as to the keepers of a city 
of refuge,—came only to find you both gone, gone to 
the city, to the general headquarters,—gone, both of 
you,—conveniently gone? Oh, no, that cannot be, but 
while you were gone a reign of terror swept over this 
town, with no one to stay it,—man and boys beaten 
over the head for no cause save the fact that they 
crowded the front of that store waiting for bread,— 
bread for the hungry. Go, look for yourselves,—see 
the blood in the street, on the steps, blood of the hun- 
gry, blood spilled by the will of this company. I saw 
it spilled, saw the hoofs of those horses forced by mad, 
uniformed boys into the crowd. I heard the cries and 
the curses. Men, when will it stop? When will you 
stop it?” 

She raised her strong, ministering hands in clenched 
fists to her breast with a gesture at once strong and 
imploring, while her face, intense and set with the wrath 
of the shame and horror of those moments, became an 
inspired fury of justice. James Judson answered her 
without an instant of hesitation, in a voice courteous 
and almost an agony of quietness. 

“Miss Stanton, you are kind to relieve us of the 
responsibility, for knowledge of what you tell us. 
Colonel Frank will go with you,—he has full author- 


. bP] 


ity. 


THE FURNACE I4I 


“But,” cried the girl, “it is too late,—the thing is 
done. What of to-morrow?’ And Superintendent 
Judson answered as he had spoken before, ‘Colonel 
Frank will go with you.” 

Three minutes later they came to the Strike Com- 
mittee’s relief station. In that brief interval Gene Stan- 
ton had made the assistant superintendent acquainted 
with the fact that the unexpected charge upon the crowd 
at the store had been made by a score of troopers, and 
that the affair had apparently been directed from a 
closed car, a regular company car, that stood through- 
out the riot at the grade crossing of the switching rail- 
road two blocks away. 

“T heard the shouting from my room at the ‘Y.W.’ 
As I came running into the street by the car, a door 
swung open, and for an instant that black fiend,’ she 
spoke with horror of Brudidge, “looked out. He 
called to me, but I ran faster. Then I saw it all.’”’ She 
finished with a shudder. 

About the street were unmistakable signs of con- 
flict, broken hats, torn clothing, scattered, trampled 
provisions and red stains. Nothing had been cleared 
away. The “fragments” had not been gathered up; 
rather they had been left as a “warning,” an ominous 
sign. 

Without hesitation and taking account of everything 
as he went, Malcolm Frank pushed through the door, 
instinctively making a shield for Gene Stanton, who 
came close behind him. A practically deserted room 
greeted him. John Webber, his head bandaged (he had 
been beaten as he rushed to the entrance when the 
first cries rang out), was bracing the handle of a crushed 


142 THE FURNACE 


basket,—baskets were scarce and expensive. He 
looked up and smothered a curse when he saw Frank. 
The whispered conversation going on between the few 
strikers standing against the wall had stopped in a sort 
of sickening suspense when the door had swung on its 
hinges. 

“Webber,” said the assistant superintendent, ‘I’m 
here from the company to say that the unfortunate 
affair of to-day will be investigated at once,—to-night. 
I don’t intend to pass a snap judgment, but I do intend 
to see justice done. I'll be back within an hour. The 
company wants the evidence.” 

It was then that John Webber, no longer able to re- 
strain himself, breaking at last under the load of the 
curse placed upon him, leaped the counter as though to 
come to grips with the representative of the institution 
that had made his torment, and as he came he cried, 
“Damn the company! and, Malcolm Frank, damn you 
for a traitor to your kind!” 

Thus for the second time in his life Malcolm Frank 
had heard himself called the only name that could strike 
him blind with rage. What the end would have been 
cannot be told, for even as the assistant superintendent 
braced himself for the impact of John Webber’s charg- 
ing body, a singing bullet seamed his cheek and made 
a burning way through the forehead and the brain of 
that crazed and hapless man. Almost at the same in- 
stant a terror-stricken Pole sprawled across the thres- 
hold of the store with two dismounted troopers close 
upon him. 

The thing had happened in a lightning moment— 
two men on the floor, one quiet, a fountain spurting 


THE FURNACE 143 


from his head, the other shieking in the ignorance of 
his fear, while the officers of the law, startled by the 
unexpected ending of their chase, waited upon some 
word from the man they recognized as an official of the 
company whose property they were under orders to 
protect. 

Malcolm sensed rather than heard the smothered 
gasp of the woman whose escape from death a moment 
before had been almost as narrow as his, and putting 
out a protecting arm she did not seem to need, he de- 
manded peremptorily, “What does this mean? Who 
fired?’ And one of the two young riders of the con- 
stabulary replied, “My gun did it.” He held up the 
still smoking weapon. ‘Ordered this fellow to halt, and 
he ducked.” He touched the groveling striker with his 
boot. “‘We ran him to cover here, and when he came 
through I let him have it.” 

“Let who have it?” barked Frank, pointing to the 
dead roller, and bringing his finger back through the 
crimson trail on his own cheek. The trooper stared 
wild-eyed. ‘My God!’ he blurted out, “TI didn’t mean 
to do it,’—like some victim of a sudden palsy he stood 
before the colonel, who went on: 

“This is the end of another day of shooting the 
wrong parties, damning law and liberty and spreading 
terror. Who—” and as though in answer to his half- 
formed question there broke upon them the staccato 
of an automobile’s churning as a great machine drew 
up in front of the building. 

“We are under orders from the office, Superintend- 
ent. The man in that machine out there spotted this 
fellow with a poster in his hand and told us to get 


144 THE FURNACE 


39 


him.” Still clutched in the man’s hand was a crumpled 
white dodger of advertising size. Frank took it from 
him. He read what the Pole who knew no English 
could not read,—an inoffensive, well within the law 
appeal to strikers, a call to loyalty and courage. 

Lifting his eyes from the sheet, he said, ““Who’s in 
the car?” but it was not necessary for the trooper to 
answer. The occupant of the churning machine had 
grown impatient. He was baffled, misled by the silence. 
The waiting horses of the constabulary reassured him, 
and so he stepped out and pushed the door of the 
strikers’ store, which swung inward, slightly ajar. Be- 
yond the heads of dismounted troopers Malcolm Frank, 
who had caught the click of heels on the steps, saw the 
movement, and rightly interpreting it, brushed aside 
the men in front of him, and, reaching out, flung the 
door back mightily and braced it open with his foot. 

On the threshold, half as though to flee, stood Peter 
Brudidge. Trapped, he turned at bay. 

“Another dead man, Brudidge,” said Frank, and he 
pointed to the body on the floor. “Help me carry him 
out.” Startled, incredulous, Brudidge looked down 
upon John Webber’s bleeding corpse, then up to the 
stricken face of Gene Stanton,—even then Malcolm 
felt the insult of the man’s eyes when they rested on 
her. Even then he sensed the fear of evils yet to come. 
But led by some impulse he could not define, Brudidge 
came, and, stooping, took up the dead roller’s limbs as 
the man he hated raised his shoulders. Down the steps 
Brudidge followed, to the car, his car, for to it Frank 
led him. There upon the deep seat they laid the bloody 
striker, covered him with the robe of the company he 


THE FURNACE 145 


had served, and thus they bore him, this form of a man, 
an American worker and citizen, who “never knew his 
kid,” who “hadn’t time,’—thus they came with him 
to a tin-covered shack in Goat Hollow, where presently 
they left a woman weeping. 


CHAPTER XIV 


Ae so another family was added to the growing 
cares of Gene Stanton, who had already missed 
one house-party and who would miss many another be- 
cause of what a certain impatient young man, scion of 
an ancient New York family, called “a darn whim that 
needs some cave man stuff to drag her out of.” Let 
it be remarked, however, that the aforesaid youth, 
husky enough to smash a Yale formation, had not the 
slightest idea of following his own suggestion. 

It was mid-afternoon before Malcolm Frank had 
completed his follow-up of the riot at the store. Not 
a word had passed between him and Peter Brudidge 
from the time they started with their bloody burden 
until they separated in front of the widow’s shack,— 
the assistant superintendent to return to his interrupted 
task, and the man who was called the “black killer’ to 
hurry out of the village. 

Gene Stanton was not far behind the impromptu 
death car. She anticipated the immediate needs of the 
stricken family; made a mental note of the more im- 
perative future requirements, and then, stopping here 
and there as she went, turned her face toward the office. 
When she came for the second time that day into the 
great room of the superintendents of the Oldsburg 
mills, she found the first assistant trying to reach her 
by phone. With a look of unmistakable relief he 
greeted her: 

146 


THE FURNACE 147 


“Mr. Judson has gone to the city,—is in the city,” he 
volunteered, “but give me your orders,’ and he made 
a fair attempt at a smile, a sort of reminiscent smile. 

“Oh, don’t torture me,” the girl cried, “I can’t ask 
you to forgive me, but I can, I do, tell you how I despise 
myself,’ and as she spoke she sank into the great chair 
of the superintendent. Malcolm could almost feel the 
resentment of the chair at the other end of the room. 
He despised himself for a certain elation he felt at her 
mood, but as he looked down upon her pathetically 
beautiful figure crumpled over the desk, the panorama 
of that kaleidoscopic day swept before him in its high 
and flaming lights, and he answered her: 

“Forgive?” As aman ina half stupor he asked it. 
“Forgive?” Mechanically he repeated it. ‘‘Forgive?” 
and he lifted his voice. “If you can forgive us, you'll 
do more than God has, and more than I’d have the nerve 
to ask Him to do,” and at that moment he felt himself 
the responsible party, the one to blame, the scape-goat 
of the company. 

Incredulously the girl held her eyes upon him,—new 
eyes, eyes of new seeing,—and half-whispered, “Oh! 
I am glad.” 

For long minutes the great clock measured the time 
unnoticed. The occupants of that room were con- 
scious not of it, nor of each other. They had gone a 
long way toward finding themselves and had stopped 
to appraise some new values. Malcolm Frank it was 
who took command of the silence. 

“Superintendent Judson carried down the first draft 
of our report on the riot, and he seemed to make much 
of the fact that you saw it.” The speaker’s eyes ques- 


148 THE FURNACE 


tioned her as he spoke, but she made no sign. “I will 
meet him with later details and confirmations at dinner. 
The officer whose bullet killed Webber is suspended. 
As to the responsible party—he comes later.” There 
was something ominous, almost sinister, in the way he 
lingered over those last words, and Gene caught to- 
gether the papers on the desk as she cried in uncovered 
terror: , 

“Don’t! Don’t! Don’t say it,—don’t think it! 
Never have I feared as I fear him, but one thing I fear 
more,” and then, hopelessly confused, she stopped and 
waited, but the man had only heard, he had not under- 
stood, and as though he had not heard, he went on: 

“To-morrow I am going home,—to think; going 
back for a day to the air where my old castles grew. 
I cannot see them here. I have lost them in the soot and 
grime. But for the days before us,’ and unconsciously 
his tone had become intimate, “I need to see again 
their shining walls. Won't you accept that invitation 
now, and come with me? I'll forgive you for refusing 
the other if you do,” he went on whimsically. ‘And 
you'll find a bit of rest and perhaps a castle, too,” he 
concluded. 

As though the decision had been long made, she re- 
plied, “Thank you very much. I will go.” 

The next morning as they rode through the blackened 
hills of western Pennsylvania, Malcolm Frank told the 
quiet young woman seated in front of him, whose eyes 
seldom turned from the parlor-car window, of his in- 
terview with Superintendent Judson. It had been brief 
and rather unsatisfactory. Mr. Judson had taken his 
additional data, saying, “I am to see President Branson 


THE FURNACE 149 


again at ten to-night. You will not need to stay.” His 
dismissal, for it amounted to that, had puzzled the first 
assistant; also the fact that when he had informed his 
senior of the Sunday visit to Jonesville that gentleman 
had appeared unmistakably relieved. 

“Glad you are going, Malcolm,” he had said. ‘You 
need the change. Stay on a few days. We will get 
along.” James Judson had not been informed that the 
plan included Gene Stanton, but the keen eyes of others, 
unfriendly, suspicious eyes, saw them depart. 

The three hours which brought them to the junction 
a mile from the tipple town (no trains ran on the 
branch line on Sunday) were for Malcolm Frank 
very short: He might have improved the time by pre- 
paring his traveling companion for the surprise his 
home would bring to her, but he did not. He might 
have bridged the gap for her between his childhood 
and his coming to Oldsburg as an under official, but he 
did not. 

Her first surprise had come when she had been in- 
vited to make the trip. She knew that he was a self- 
made man, foreign-born; that he had come from the 
lap of poverty, out of a “hunky” town, and up from 
the pit. At first she could not understand his invitation 
at all, even though she knew, too, that he was in com- 
plete ignorance of her own background and home en- 
vironment; but later she came to a very natural con- 
clusion: “He is kind enough to wish me to have a 
change, and complimentary enough to feel that as a 
social worker and casual student of industrial affairs 
I will be able to find new interest in a distinctively coal 
miners’ village.” 


150 THE FURNACE 


As for Frank, he only knew that he wanted her to go 
with him to Jonesville to see his people and his hills. 
Had there been more time for self-searching, he would 
have known that he desired her to know the unat- 
tractive, the worst about himself; the unattractive 
and the worst, as quality is judged by accepted stand- 
ards. 
The footpath from the junction wound with the 
stream. The later leaves of autumn were sliding down 
the wind; the melting frost made tiny mirrors in the 
trail as Gene Stanton and her guide followed the easy 
grade. Now and then through the thinned foliage they 
caught glimpses of the higher range. The walk was 
altogether satisfying and ended all too quickly. 

There was a real surprise for Gene Stanton in the 
tipple town and in the home of Malcolm Frank—not in 
the dirty, winding street, with its company store and 
company shacks, nor yet in the emerald encircling hills. 
The former she had known; the latter the assistant 
superintendent had well described. Her surprise came 
when she met the young colonel’s people. It was in 
them. Afterwards she knew how foolish it had been 
to assume that he was some foreign growth upon a 
mean or unworthy stalk. 

As she entered the Finnish miner’s humble home she 
sensed the difference between the hangings and the 
occupants, and even before the prematurely aged man 
had courteously acknowledged the introduction of his 
son, she felt the mystery of blood and lineage. That 
the mean furnishings, the cramped quarters, the shawl- 
draped woman who said little but whose eyes loved her 
son with the depth of lights that linger on far-northern 


THE FURNACE 151 


snows, would have added nothing to the knowledge of 
her friends, she knew, but to her they told of hidden 
things that yet will build the greater, freer nation. 
Even before the afternoon she was grateful to Colonel 
Frank for his invitation, and her heart warmed toward 
him as she acknowledged his faith,—his faith in his 
people and in her. 

“Now for the royal crest,” Malcolm said eagerly, as 
they rose from the simple noonday repast. Quickly 
he changed from his business suit to his old field uni- 
form, minus the blouse,—Miss Stanton had come in 
her tramping outfit——and then up through the hickory 
scrub, by straggling vine-maples and sturdier dogwood, 
to the loftier pines he led the way. 

A half hour of brisk climbing brought them to the 
summit. Silently they stood in a boy’s holy of holies. 
Far behind them lay a rich Ohio city of potteries and 
furnaces. Like a yellowing silver thread the once beau- 
tiful, now sordid, river wound through the smoke of 
mills that had soiled it. Nearer were lesser hills that 
rose from encircling fogs of richly laden smoke,—hills 
that buttressed the summit all about. In front of them 
and beyond, the sentinels of green and gold that held 
the immediate foreground stretched away—a fence- 
checked, road-rimmed valley of fatness. Below them, 
at their feet, was the town, a smudge of black across 
the bare elbow of a hill, a smear along a stream that 
once was crystal clear. Above them was a faultless 
sky, a vast bubble of a dome—God’s Taj Mahal. 

Malcolm pointed toward a stump, a resting-place; 
the girl only shook her head and whispered as to her- 
self. 


152 THE FURNACE 


“They sit not in the place of kings, who yet have 
crowns to wear.” 

How long they would have tarried, or what the end 
would have been, no man may write, for Malcolm saw 
again his shining walls, and stood once more beneath 
the upflung turrets of his castled dreams. He looked 
a poet or a seer, but cast\ in the lines | of, another 
Hercules. 

Gene Stanton, conscious now that she no longer mat- 
tered, that for the moment he was quite alone, allowed 
her eyes a freedom they had never before taken, and 
they answered her, “Like no other man you have ever 
known, is he—son of a new freedom,” and then, from 
an almost forgotten page of an old romance she had 
read in childhood, her memory picked up a name and 
gave it back to her,—‘‘Fair God.” 

How long they would have waited there above their 
clouds no man may write, but this is written—the 
ground beneath them trembled as from an earthquake. 
The smaller rocks loosened and rolled into the dead 
vines at their feet, while a muffled roar came to them 
as though relayed from the mountain’s heart to the 
entrance of the mine; and from the entrance to the 
tipple and then upward. Startled, the young woman 
sprang to the side of Malcolm. He, instantly alert, and 
knowing, said, “Go back by the trail,’ and then leap- 
ing over the edge, disappeared in a small avalanche of 
bowlders and dead limbs that marked his wild down- 
ward way. 

Gene Stanton watched and waited. She had lived 
through so many experiences of intense emotional pain, 
—experiences unexpected, startling, overwhelming, that 


THE FURNACE 153 


she was not overcome by the sudden, the appalling, 
change from a mood of supreme exaltation and peace 
to one of uncertainty and foreboding. As she watched 
that hastening line of dust and débris she measured with 
her sure eye the chance the man had of reaching what 
she instinctively knew was his destination, the mine’s 
mouth, without disaster, and not because of the chance, 
but because of the man, she was reassured. She started 
as she realized how she was coming to count on that 
man. 

What the trouble was, her city-born ears had not told 
her, but a woman’s intuition had spelled out ‘‘disaster.”’ 
Even as she turned and hurried to the head of the trail 
up which they had climbed together, her eyes caught 
the forms of men and women rushing toward the 
tipple, saw Malcolm’s cloudlike trail stop at the moun- 
tain end of the great slate dump, as a lone figure leaped 
into a swirl of smoke that shut out the grimy maw of 
the drift. 

She knew, before she reached the house of Colonel 
Frank’s people, that she would find it deserted. 

“Thank God!” she thought, as she hurried on 
through the deserted village toward the tipple. “Thank 
God it is Sunday!” There would be few to suffer and 
fewer to die. Once again the many would escape. And 
so it had happened. The heavy fall of slate and the 
terrific explosion had found the far-back galleries de- 
serted. About the entrance a few guards and special 
workers were caught by the first upward draft of the 
fumes, as the fans went dead. But only four were 
beyond help when carried out, and the town was saved 
the harrowing experience of waiting for days while 


154 THE FURNACE 


frantic miners tore through tons of fallen roof and 
caved walls to find dead or dying men. 

Malcolm Frank recognized instantly the explosion 
for what it was, and practically falling down the moun- 
tain to the mine entrance, had been the first to reach the 
scene of disaster. Tearing his woolen shirt from his 
back he soaked it in a black pool by the mule stable 
as he ran across the dump. He bound it over his nos- 
trils and mouth, and, dropping to his knees, plunged 
into the entrance. Twice he went, and came, quickly, 
each time bringing back a man. 

Now others as willing as he have joined him,—five 
minutes more, and the boss himself has gotten the great 
fan started. The old priest kneels above the poor 
fellows who, burned beyond recognition, are screaming 
in their delirium of pain; about him are the shawl- 
draped madonnas of tragedy, and everywhere are the 
children. : . 

This was the scene upon which Gene Stanton came, 
two minutes after Malcolm, soaking his improvised gas- 
mask again in that foul pool, turned to the mine for 
the last time. One more man he had seen just behind 
the second gallery door. He waved the eager crowd 
back. 

“You, Ding Cruce,” he called in Polish, and a veri- 
table mountain of sinew leaped up to his side. At the 
first door the young Finn left the young Pole,—broth- 
ers they were now, grappling death. “Wait for me,— 
I'll get him here,—you get him out.” 

Flat on his belly Ding Cruce waited. On into the 
dense night, the horror of smothering, Frank crawled. 
He ground his nose to raw flesh, so closely did he hug 


THE FURNACE 155 


the sanded slime on the floor. A thousand miles he 
traveled! But now he was no longer in the mine,— 
he was back at Cantigny, wallowing through No 
Man’s Land. Ah, yes, now he remembered,—it was the 
colonel he was after. He couldn’t go back after all,— 
couldn’t go back till he found him. Another thousand 
miles he crawled. He grew suddenly angry, and tried 
to shout at the fiends who drove bayonets into his back, 
through his chest. He tore at the gag they forced into 
his mouth. Then, as he fell forward, he touched flesh 
—and was sane again for a moment. 

Back he whirled, dragging something; his colonel 
again,—rolling him, pushing him, lifting him, pulling 
him on by his hair. “A thousand miles! A thousand 
miles! A thousand miles!’ he raved. Ding Cruce 
heard him coming, disobeyed orders, crawled with un- 
covered face to meet him. Back then they turned to- 
gether, back they came from their foul tomb. But 
Malcolm fell across the iron sill of the first inner door, 
and Ding Cruce it was who staggered out into the light 
with a dead miner on his back,—staggered out alone. 

“Go get him!” he roared, and like one man that 
village of Babel, that town of many-tongued peoples, 
swept forward. They poured toward the first level 
like water through a funnel, and the funnel it was that 
stopped them, saved them. 

“Stand back!” shouted the superintendent, and while 
strong men pushed the throng back from the entrance, 
others, strong as they, rushed to the side of their old 
comrade, lifted and bore him to safety. 

Gene Stanton it was,—Gene Stanton who had lived 
an age in that scant ten minutes, who took charge of 


156 THE FURNACE 


Malcolm Frank when they laid him on the blanket. 
Gene Stanton it was who was soul to the hand of the 
young company doctor. Gene Stanton it was who 
poured out of her life new life into that madly driven 
pulmotor. Gene Stanton it was who held back the 
death that had claimed him. For down to his ear she 
bent, till her lips brushed his flesh, brushed and lingered, 
and with the beat of her heart she called, called, search- 
ingly, passionately, commandingly, “Malcolm! Mal- 
colm! Malcolm!” and out at the end of the world he 
heard her, listened, obeyed, and turned back. 


CHAPTER XV 


Tee papers that gave the story of that day said 
little about the men who perished, but much 
about the man who survived. Days afterwards he re- 
marked bitterly, “They were—hunkies.’ I was— 
Colonel Frank. God help the people of this country 
to see coal,—the blood in its black. The blood we don’t 
and can’t pay for.” | 

Fortunately for Gene Stanton there were no re- 
porters present at the time of the disaster,—fortunately, 
and for many reasons. For many weeks, beyond the 
Frank family and the grateful villagers, and those 
others of the sinister eyes, only James Judson came to 
know where she had spent her Sunday. 

The news of the disaster and of assistant superin- 
tendent Frank’s heroic part in it was received at the 
general offices of the Bancroft Steel Company with 
mixed emotions. Peter Brudidge broke furniture in his 
room and cursed. President Branson’s face was a 
study, but a statement issued by the company’s publicity 
department indicated that somebody’s mind was still 
functioning 100 per cent. “Again an official of the in- 
dustry gives the lie to the charge that steel has no soul.” 
With this as a text the country was given once more the 
long list of commendable gratuities and benefactions 
originating in the great corporation’s welfare depart- 
ment. 

At the end of ten days, in which the strike had 

157 


158 THE FURNACE 


dropped more and more from the public eye, but in 
which it had gone steadily into deadlock, the deadlock 
that only the company’s triumph would break, Malcolm 
Frank returned to the office, not well, but “fit to fight,”’ 
as he expressed it, to his delighted superior whose pride 
in him had assumed new and larger proportions, and 
whose love for him brothered his pride. 

He learned that Gene Stanton was reported as having 
gone home for a few days. He found comfort in the 
intimation that she would return. Like some angel 
from the old dream castle of his childhood, she had 
been through the first two days after his near-suffoca- 
tion. Never would he be able to tell where dreams 
ended and reality began,—nor did he care to try. She 
was gone when he became fully conscious; that is, she 
was not about, but he had a satisfying feeling that 
neither was she absent. At first he looked for a letter, 
and then became satisfied without a written word for 
he knew that no word from her now could be written. 

When he found her gone from Oldsburg, he felt 
along with his keen disappointment a certain relief,— 
the relief that comes when one is suddenly spared a 
delicious embarrassment, a relief that makes one angry 
for experiencing it, and the regret that follows it doubly 
hard to bear. Now for the first time, too, he thought 
deeply of Gene Stanton’s people. Who were they? 
What were they? Never a word had she told him 
concerning herself. As he remembered her silence 
he remembered also his own volubility, and was dis- 
mayed. He was enjoined by honor from questioning 
James Judson, and so he worried and waited. At least 


THE FURNACE 159 


he knew, and the knowing was far from comforting, 
that she had not been reared in a shack hard by a 
tipple. 

Then came a long letter from Haig Brant; a long 
letter it was to make up for a long silence. Brant had 
been busy. A long letter it was, too, because of the 
long story it told: 


“We are having a very important conference here 
at the Hotel Pennsylvania; a meeting called by the 
Industrial Bureau of the United World Movement,— 
some name, that, Colonel, and some bunch are behind 
it! Tm close to things because Brainard Roberts has 
been engaged as a sort of special consulting engineer, 
a kind of social specialist and human diagnoser. The 
head of the department (unless he has written you, get 
ready for a shock!) is Bruce Jayne. Now perhaps you 
see the fine Italian hand that has juggled the balls of 
fate to get part of this bunch together—‘C’est la 
guerre.’ 

“T can’t tell you about the movement itself, but it 
looks something like the Allies looked in France after 
we'd been licked to a frazzie, forced to establish the 
High Command, and had elected Foch generalissimo. 
This is, or is to be, unless the saints get cold feet and 
call in the advance, ‘a united Christian battle line.’ 
Thus does your sacrilegious correspondent express him- 
self. They’re out to hang crépe on the door of the devil 
wherever that Hun of all Huns or his children happen 
to operate. 

“I don’t know the folks they represent, but these guys 


160 THE FURNACE 


around here are regular fellows; they mean business,— 
you've tried a sample,—Bruce Jayne. I’m having the 
time of my life trying to keep up with the ecclesiastical 
procession without burning a hole in the sleeve of my 
gown,—but let me repeat it, I am having the time of 
Raviibeste wae 

“Now as to the conference. All of these churches are 
to send representatives. Jayne’s bureau is calling it in 
the name of the various denominations. There will 
be secretaries, plain-clothes and horse-collar parsons, 
and full-grade bishops, Catholics as well as Protestants. 
The chaplain runs true to his old generous form. Big 
capitalists will be present, too, and long-haired parlor- 
socialists, and John Peebles and a bunch of big labor 
leaders. 

“That crowd, if Jayne can keep them from choking 
each other to death long enough to do it, will discuss 
(emphasize that last word properly) ‘Christian rela- 
tions in industry’ and “What would Jesus do in a strike 
or a lockout ?’ 

“Now, Colonel, Bruce Jayne has done a lot for us, 
and we've got to stand by him. Why, he’s as brave— 
or as crazy—as a man going into a den of wildcats with 
a nut-cracker. Come on here to help cover his retreat 
when that big offensive—and it’s sure to come—opens 
on him. You have nothing to fear, for you are im- 
mune. We discovered in France that man can’t make 
a gas that will kill you, and now we know that God 
won't.” 


There was much more in the letter, which wound 
up with: 


THE FURNACE 161 


“Seriously, I want you to come. The big strike’s 
bound to get into the discussion, and for yourself, for 
the company and for the men you will some day return 
to, you who believe you have never left them [and as 
Frank read that he knew he had never left them] you 
can’t afford not to be present.” 


‘This was the postscript: 


“Addenda: Reference to gown not to be taken seri- 
ously.” 


However, Malcolm Frank had made his decision 
some time before he reached the postscript, so that not 
even the disappointment of missing the sight of the 
major arrayed in vestments could keep him at home. 
James Judson readily consented to the trip, but added, 
as a sort of final word: 

“Tt will hardly be necessary to leave a forwarding 
address with the secretary,—he seems to be overworked. 
Sometimes I fear that Peter Brudidge is more solicit- 
ous concerning his health than I am. So we'll try to 
relieve him as much as possible. I wouldn’t worry 
President Branson, either—at just this time. [ll look 
after your desk,—personally,—and should the fact of 
your presence at this affair come back here, I think that 
it will be easy to reconcile General Headquarters to your 
absence—since you will be gone.” 

The two men smiled at each other. Never had the 
younger been more grateful for their perfect under- 
standing. 


CHAPTER XVI 


we Bruce Jayne returned from his memorable 

trip to Oberlin, he showed his sister Josephine 
a resignation,—the one he later gave into the hands of 
the senior secretary of his Board. To that surprised 
official’s query, ‘““Well, what does this mean? What 
are you going to do?” he replied, “I don’t know what 
I am going to do, but it means that I am not going 
to do any longer what I have been doing,—I know one 
job that isn’t mine and I am going a-hunting.” 

His old contagious smile lighted up his face,—the 
smile the office had missed since he returned. “Well,” 
generously volunteered the veteran secretary, “I am 
glad to see you feeling that way about the future. 
You had us all worried. We will miss you, but I am 
pretty sure we won’t altogether lose you.” 

Thus with a hearty Godspeed Bruce Jayne pulled 
down his old rolltop for the last time, and for the first 
time since his ordination walked forth a jobless 
worker, but a free man. 

To the boy at home, the change, without being un- 
derstood, was welcome. It meant hours, wild hours in 
the day, with his father,—with his father who was 
different now than the lad had ever known him,— 
hours with a jovial teller of the most thrilling tales a 
wee fellow ever heard, and a maker of toys more amaz- 
ing than any the shops ever produced. 


To Josephine the change in her brother was little less 
162 


THE FURNACE 163 


than a miracle. “Jo,” said he to her one day, “‘Wednes- 
day is Faith’s birthday,—the first since the war, the first 
since she left us. Let’s celebrate it.” His voice broke, 
but he went on, “Let’s go to the woods with our 
dinner.” And so began a custom that carried through 
the years, and long after sister Jo had cares and kiddies 
of her own, the two Bruces would celebrate in the open, 
under the trees she had loved, the anniversary of the 
“little mother’? who though always absent was never 
away. 

Just when the woman heart of Jo had begun to flutter 
with vague panic because of what began to be for so 
active a mind as Bruce Jayne’s a long vacation, a letter 
came from New York,—‘“The letter I have been wait- 
ing for,” the big fellow said. It was signed in the bold 
scrawl, half smearing the page, of Dave Jenkins, the 
great evangelist to men and a former chaplain in the 
army, with service in the Spanish-American war: 

“Just heard from Beckwith, and he tells me you’re 
out of a job, that you fired yourself. Well, I’m glad, 
and now I want you to run over for a long talk with 
me. Come on Friday morning—the Giants play Pitts- 
burgh in the afternoon, and then we’ll eat, and talk in 
the evening.” 

And so it came about that Bruce Jayne heard first 
from his old friend Jenkins the story of the United 
World Movement, felt his heart burn within him as he 
listened, and his soul leap to welcome this prophecy 
of the union of God’s children. To him it was as 
though he had been led by his friend, whose eyes 
kindled as he talked, to a rock in a weary world. 

There were numerous details to be worked out, but 


164 THE FURNACE 


within a fortnight the sister and son of Chaplain Jayne 
were installed in a tiny apartment overlooking Central 
Park on the west, where the boy could “‘put green grass 
under his feet,” as his open-air father expressed it, and 
Bruce, Senior, had been installed as Director of the 
Industrial Bureau of the great new movement. 

There had been a long and perfectly frank talk be- 
tween Bruce and his sister before the final decision was 
made. The big brother was growing daily more con- 
cerned as he realized how dependent he and the lad had 
become, how hopeless they would be without her, but 
how fully they commanded her time and monopolized 
her young life. 

“Tt isn’t fair, Jo,’ he had said, as they sat together 
one evening after “Sonnie” had been tucked under his 
sheet. “It isn’t fair to you,’ but she stopped him al- 
most fiercely, and cried out with a hurt, dry sob in 
her throat: : | 

“Oh, Bruce, don’t strike me like that. If you love me, 
just take me for granted; just let me be selfish; please 
let me be selfish and do what I want to do.” 

There it ended. Never again in the half dozen years 
that she gave her rich young life to his motherless home, 
before the joy of her own home came to her, did he 
raise that question. 

Bruce Jayne found his new associations and associ- 
ates most congenial. The men were all leaders and 
nearly all in his immediate group, the executive group, 
were outstanding figures in their own churches, before 
they had come to the new venture. 

The young chaplain was not selected to direct the 
activities of the Industrial Department of the organiza- 


THE FURNACE 165 


tion because he was a radical. Indeed, although he did 
not know it, he was a compromise candidate. Bruce 
Jayne was physically and morally a progressive, politi- 
cally he was a progressive, but in vital particulars of 
his personal faith and in Americanism he was soundly 
conservative. Generous toward those who differed 
with him in their thinking, he had no generosity to 
waste upon those who had only a neurotic or sensual 
communism to substitute for the sanctity of a home, or 
a blatant “internationalism” with which to replace old- 
fashioned love of country. He did believe, profoundly 
believe, in the brotherhood of man, and believing in it, 
knew that he did not understand it. He knew that the 
words were as yet an easy and sometimes hollow phrase, 
but he carried an open mind, and had his face set in 
fearlessness toward the light of truth. 

Indeed, it was just this latter quality that finally 
decided him when the unfamiliar character of this new 
work caused him to hesitate about accepting the invi- 
tation formally extended by the General Secretary of 
the movement, Dr. Searl Ballard. Haig Brant it was 
who said to him, “Well, I can’t settle it for you; if I 
could, you would be at that desk in the morning. But 
this I know,—that organization needs you; and if it’s 
as great a thing as you’ve been telling me, you’re bound 
to have an embarrassing conscience forever if you 
turn that invitation down. I tell you, they need you, 
need your conservative old head and liberal young 
heart.”’ 

Brant made no attempt to conceal his great delight 
when the whole thing was settled. ‘Man! now I 
believe in that ‘Voice’ of yours. I have to; why I 


166 THE FURNACE 


heard it myself!” And a few days later he came in 
with his chief. 

“‘Here’s the man I took for better or worse,” was his 
introduction, “the man who practices what you fellows 
preach, but who gets himself in bad by making that 
mistake.’ 

The chaplain remembered the description of Brainard 
Roberts given by Brant on the old Aquitania, and often 
again he had occasion to remember it, for Roberts was 
a man among men, a “doer of the word, also,” a fear- 
less gentleman of generous and gentle soul whose 
trained and fruitful mind was searching out the way of 
better human relationships and of larger, fuller life for 
all. 

It was not long until the organization of Brainard 
Roberts was being drawn upon by the Industrial Bureau 
for the technical advice and equipment, and the trained 
research leadership that it, better than all the other 
similar institutions and organizations in New York 
City, was able to give. Soon Roberts himself was 
called to the staff of the United World Movement in a 
part-time relationship. 

The conference in October, to which Brant sent 
Malcolm Frank so urgent an invitation, called at the 
Pennsylvania Hotel in the name of the social service 
agencies of the various churches cooperating in the 
United World Movement, was the result of the com- 
bined thinking of three men. “But,” said Brant to a 
friend one evening, “two men produced it—two men 
who are as different as any two days of March—but 
as alike as two hemispheres of any given truth.” 

The conference itself had a stormy road to travel 


THE FURNACE 167 


before it received the sanction of the executive com- 
mittee of the movement. The reputation of Chaplain 
Jayne for “sound doctrine’ and old-fashioned patri- 
otism finally carried the day, however, and after a 
concerted and intensive campaign of less than a month 
the gathering already briefly described in Brant’s letter 
to Malcolm Frank was convened,—a gathering des- 
tined to have a large place in the history of industrial 
and social relationships. 

Bruce Jayne himself had no great personal en- 
thusiasm for the meeting at the first; he rather feared 
it,—at least he was suspicious of it. But he had become 
convinced that the nation was suffering from a great in- 
ternal sickness ; that the land he had so nearly died for, 
now needed a lot of living for, and he knew that there 
could be no hope of successful treatment for the patient 
until the case had been thoroughly diagnosed. So, in 
the name of the church, he set up the clinic, with at least 
a half notion that the remedy must finally be spiritual. 

To Roberts he said one night, “Jesus said, “I am the 
way, the truth and the life.’ That means governments 
as well as men; that means human relationships as well 
as divine, and that’s why, whether I like it or not, this 
conference ought to be held under the auspices and at 
the call of the church,—not one church, nor two, but 
the whole church, Catholic as well as Protestant, Jew 
as well as Gentile,” and Roberts in his soft voice had 
replied : 

“That’s it—‘I am the way,’ and the way is, “Love 
your neighbor as yourself.’ ” 

The chaplain grinned at him affectionately and said: 

“You old radical!—they tell me you'll ruin me; that 


168 THE FURNACE 


your ‘Bolshevism’ will rock my boat until it fills and 
sinks. I’m warned against you by nearly all my friends. 
They say you train with the socialists, and they think 
that war is ugly. You old radical !—talking like Jesus,” 
~—Bruce became sober as he finished—“‘and then dar- 
ing to act like Him.” 

The morning of the momentous day dawned bright 
and clear. The chaplain and his two aides, Roberts and 
Brant, were about early. 

“Like all good religious, non-political gatherings, 
this conference must have a slate,” the major reminded 
them, and have a slate it did,—one that went through 
without a hitch, and to the entire satisfaction of every- 
body,—when at 9.30 that morning the nearly two hun- 
dred delegates were called to order by Bruce Jayne who 
briefly announced the purpose of the gathering. 

Doctor James Justice was elected chairman, unani- 
mously and enthusiastically. Christian statesman and 
profound student of the humanities, perhaps as no other 
churchman, he carried the confidence of that company 
of thinkers, dreamers and workers when he came for- 
ward to make his brief address,—an address that was 
a challenge to a divine radicalism that would wither the 
out-grown traditions behind which age-old industrial 
wrongs were hiding. A divine radicalism that would 
dare to believe the words of the great Teacher and then 
dare to practice them. A divine radicalism that would 
be terrible to sin and injustice wherever found, but so 
discriminating because it was divine that only wrong 
men need fear it, and only sinister institutions could 
suffer because of it. 

‘The organization of the conference was quickly com- 


THE FURNACE 169 


pleted, and then, after a few outstanding delegates had 
been called for and heard, almost immediately a ques- 
tion was thrown down which dominated the entire pro- 
ceedings of the day. Brant had guessed right! A per- 
fectly innocent individual, looking only for informa- 
tion, and nearly frightened to death with what he actu- 
ally got, caught the eye of the chair, and on being 
recognized, asked: 

“What are the facts about the steel strike; are we 
getting them from—’” But he got no further. He 
had asked for facts, and at least half of the men and 
women present thought that they had them, and felt 
called upon to deliver them. Before the vigorous pre- 
siding officer had been able to restore order, one fact at 
least stood revealed,—if the delegates in attendance on 
that conference were correct, facts could be contra- 
dictory! 

The Doctor finally ruled that nothing was before the 
body, and at once a determined, a very determined, 
gentleman, without waiting for recognition, moved a 
vote of censure against the great steel corporation. His 
motion was seconded, but quickly saner counsel pre- 
vailed, and a point of order was made that placed this 
particular motion and any others like it, which may 
have been contemplated, out of the scope of the con- 
ference. 

It was at this point in the deliberations that Colonel 
Malcolm Frank arose. His train had been delayed; he 
had arrived very late, missing the chairman’s address, 
but hearing all of the discussion immediately following 
it. He had been recognized by the chaplain who hur- 
ried to him as he came into the hall. Then, seeing that 


170 THE FURNACE 


the Doctor did not know the new arrival, Bruce Jayne 
rose and begging the pardon of the chair for the in- 
trusion, said: 

“The gentleman just recognized is Colonel Malcolm 
Frank, First Assistant Superintendent of the Oldsburg 
mills of the Bancroft Steel Company.” 

The stillness that came over the gathering as the 
chaplain sat down was not only a striking contrast to 
the riotous demonstration that had just preceded it, but 
a testimony to the place that the strike itself and the 
organization against which it was directed had in 
the thought of these socially minded people. Perhaps, 
too, it was a tribute to the name of the speaker who 
stood now like a Samson among his brethren. 

Never had Malcolm Frank been more grateful for an 
interruption. Without the respite the words of his old 
friend granted him, he was sure that he would have 
utterly failed, for as his voice had challenged the atten- 
tion of the presiding officer, and as the faces of the dele- 
gates had turned toward him, he had recognized one 
face, and after that he had seen only one,—the face of 
Gene Stanton. At the extreme right of the gathering 
she sat, handsomely though quietly gowned, beautiful 
beyond any dream of woman he had ever known. She 
was not alone; with her were a woman of middle age 
and a man, a young man; but the others Malcolm saw 
only vaguely. As in a fog they were out of focus. 
Afterwards he remembered their outlines, particularly 
those of the man, and felt shamed by the feeling of re- 
sentment that memory roused within him. 

That Gene Stanton was surprised to see him, and, 
more, that she was startled,—was at once apparent. 


THE FURNACE sy 8 


Her face flushed and she seemed to half rise in her 
chair. Then she smiled,—smiled full into his eyes, 
smiled so radiantly, so intimately, that she seemed to 
bridge the distance between them and to stand again by 
his side. Ah! he was glad for the chaplain’s inter- 
ruption! 

When at last the way was open for him to go on, his 
iron will had chained his leaping heart, and he was mas- 
ter of his voice. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “‘there is no other 
question before you to-day than the steel strike. Be- 
cause of who you are and because of the call that brings 
you here, there can be no other. But it is clear, I 
think, to us all that at the moment we are not in a posi- 
tion to reach a decision, to pass a judgment. I have no 
motion to make; my peculiar relationship to one of the 
principals enjoins me from initiating an action. But 
I wish that there might be a motion made to refer this 
whole matter to a committee, a committee instructed to 
bring in a report immediately on our reconvening this 
afternoon.” 

For just a moment he hesitated, and like one who 
seeks for some added strength for a special need, he 
turned his eyes again toward Gene Stanton. She did 
not fail him. Again she smiled, and as though re- 
leased from a great embarrassment, Malcolm Frank 
finished with an impetuous eloquence that swept the 
gathering: 

“It may be unbecoming, presumptuous,” he con- 
cluded, “for me to seem to suggest ; but—get the facts! 
Let this free and representative body, this group of 
Americans, this company of Christians, set about to find 


172 THE FURNACE 


the truth, and ‘ye shall know the truth and the truth 
shall make you free.’ ” 

Like an inspired oracle the first assistant in the 
Oldsburg Steel mills concluded. He sat down in a 
burst of spontaneous applause that was at once a tribute 
to his eloquence and a vote of confidence. 

After the vigorous and sometimes verbose debate 
which followed Frank’s brief remarks—for the gather- 
ing came out of the spell his rather romantic figure had 
for the moment cast over it, and discussed the motion 
he had provoked, both for and against—the special com- 
mittee was appointed and at once retired to deliberate. 
Brant made arrangements for its members to have 
lunch together, and the report was promised for two 
o'clock in the afternoon. 

Colonel Frank was of course named on the com- 
mittee. He begged to be excused, and, for reasons at 
once apparent and not to be denied, his request was 
granted. But it was insisted that he sit with the com- 
mittee, along with a prominent labor leader. This re- 
quest he could not well refuse. As the committee mem- 
bers withdrew, Malcolm sought again the face of Gene 
Stanton, and again she came to meet his gaze, but now 
her countenance had changed. She did not smile. 
More nearly stern than he had ever known her, she was 
now. From her eyes leaped out to him a light that was 
a call, a flame that was a challenge. Through the hard 
weeks and desperate days to follow, often would he 
feel the warmth, the power of her battle-eyes. 

As quickly as he could, Colonel Frank withdrew 
from the committee-room and returned to the con- 
ference hall to be present at adjournment. The joy 


THE FURNACE 173 


of seeing and of now meeting Gene,—meeting her for 
the first time since the mine catastrophe,—overcame any 
natural hesitation he may have felt at the thought of 
coming to know her people and her home environment. 
But when his eyes eagerly sought out the spot where 
he last saw her, they found no reward. She was gone. 
Nowhere in the room could she be located. His dis- 
appointment was keen,—keen to a hurt. There was re- 
sentment, too, with the hurt,—resentment that was not 
entirely cured by a note given to him a little later by 
Brant, who said: 

“A young fellow handed me this; but if he wrote it, 
it isn’t a love letter.”’ 

On a sheet of hotel note paper Gene had written: 

“Dear Colonel Frank: [Would she ever call him 
anything else?] “I cannot tell you what your words 
meant to me.” [At least she was personal, and his heart 
sang.] “I am so sorry not to meet you for even a few 
minutes, but so glad you are so nearly your old self 
again. I have been delayed in my plans and cannot 
return to Oldsburg as soon as I hoped to, but I am com- 
ing back.” Malcolm seemed to feel something in the 
abruptness of those last words that indicated resistance 
and controversy, and he cordially detested a certain 
young man whose face he had seen, but could not very 
well remember! “Don’t let Superintendent Judson take 
any risks, and please, oh, please! stay close to him!” 
Now what did she mean by that? “Sincerely your 
friend, Gene Stanton.” 

No, that letter, while it followed two others into his 
wallet, did not fully answer his silent query, “Why 
didn’t she give me a chance to meet her? If not now, 


174. THE FURNACE 


then later?’ And again the old nameless fear of her 
past and her people rose like a specter before him. 

The report of the special committee at two o'clock 
that afternoon covered a great deal of territory and 
treated many matters, but concluded with a recommen- 
dation that the conference request the United World 
Movement, through its Industrial Bureau, to organize 
a special commission to investigate and get the full facts 
concerning the steel strike and to publish the report. 
After careful and generally friendly debate, though a 
few extremists both for and against the recommenda- 
tion gave a touch of color and a bit of heat to the final 
deliberations, the report was adopted and if not unani- 
mously, at least with no votes cast against it. 

That night there was a First Division reunion in 
New York. It began with an old “Field Kitchen” din- 
ner in a cooperative restaurant on 23rd Street, a 
project in which Brant was interested. As the three 
friends sat together in the quiet basement room, they 
went over with a good deal of satisfaction the events 
of the day. 

“A regular party, Jayne,—a regular party!” was the 
major’s hearty comment; “and now for the big do- 
ings,” he added, more soberly. 

“Yes,” the chaplain replied, “and if I decide to favor 
the request of the conference, and the investigation is 
finally authorized, I’m ready now to announce two 
members of the commission. I may have some trouble 
to get both of them accepted by the Executive Com- 
mittee, even if the investigating itself gets by; but 
here they are; Chairman, Doctor Justice; Secretary, 
Haig Brant,” and Haig Brant, for once taken com- 


THE FURNACE 175 


pletely by surprise and willing to admit it, sat in open- 
mouthed astonishment. 

“Bruce Jayne,’ he said, when he found his voice, 
“T would rather have that job than a trip to the Rhine,” 
—they were to realize a little later just what that state- 
ment meant,—‘“‘but you can’t do it. It would queer the 
whole job to name me. You wouldn’t get by the open- 
ing prayer with my appointment.” But the chaplain 
answered quietly, “We'll sure try.” 

As for Malcolm, he was happier and freer than he 
had been for months. He loved the men who sat with 
him,—loved them with all the fullness of his great 
brother-heart,—and to be with them again was like 
cleansing his soul and renewing his strength. In a 
burst of generous confidence he said: 

“Men, there was somebody present to-day that I 
wanted to see, and I was terribly cut up when I missed 
Her. 7; 

“Oh!” began Brant, but Frank retorted, “Shut up!” 
and went on, “She has made a heaven in hell in the 
valleys of steel; so of course she is an angel. There 
are several good reasons why I must see her, but only 
one that really matters! Her name is Gene Stanton.” 

When Frank finished he looked expectantly at Jayne 
and then at Brant. He was sure they would know at 
once the young woman in question,—so sure and so im- 
patient that he had overcome his natural embarrassment 
at revealing his feelings even to these comrades, and had 
broken out of his suspense. But neither Jayne nor 
Brant could give him any information. They sensed at 
once his great earnestness, and became part of his mood, 
but they knew no Gene Stanton, nor did her name 


176 THE FURNACE 


appear among any of the lists of people invited, nor on 
the roll of delegates. 

“She must have been a visitor,—the fact that she 
did not return for the afternoon session rather indicates 
it,” finally concluded the chaplain, and to that conclu- 
sion Malcolm gave despairing assent. 

“Well,” contributed Brant, “I’m glad for one angel 
out there—I rather thought that according to Biblical 
lore and tradition, angels were males, but tradition isn’t 
getting the benefit of a rising market these days, and an 
angel of the masculine variety that I have banked upon 
heavily hasn’t found his wings yet.” 

“Brant,” snorted Jayne, and there was no mistaking 
his exasperation, “cut that stuff out,—the conference is 
over. For the rest of the night the steel strike is 
settled.” 

“T accept your apology,” Haig retorted dryly. 

After the dinner, long lingered over and seasoned 
with reminiscences, the friends spent an hour in the 
open air. Up Fifth Avenue they tramped from Madi- 
son Square to the Park, by the great office buildings of 
recent origin, the high-spired churches—white marble 
and brown sandstone—the Waldorf Astoria, the Union 
League Club, the Library—standing in quiet distinc- 
tion on the site of the first reservoir—and beyond 42nd 
Street the art stores. 

“We marched down with the old First in that home- 
coming parade when I strained my chest trying to look 
the part of a returning hero, but we have been walking 
up ever since,” commented Haig Brant, as they stood 
for a moment looking back upon the canyon-like way 
they had come, before turning into the Park and stroll- 


THE FURNACE 177 


ing leisurely across to Broadway. ‘And now, where 
are we going—or do we have any objective in this ad- 
vance?” continued the speaker. 

“Let the visitor, our distinguished guest from the 
Dark Ages, express his desire,’ suggested the chaplain 
facetiously, and the “guest,’’ nothing loath, replied: 

“Well, now that the padre has surrendered his chance 
to steer us into a mission and invited me to give voice 
to my worldly desires,—here goes. Back a few cen- 
turies ago, when I was a valet to buck privates in Lon- 
don, Doris Keane was playing ‘Romance.’ The only 
night that I had a leave I went to see her. She was 
wonderful. An air raid held things up in the middle of 
the second act, but when the lights came on again, she 
came back and there wasn’t a sign that she had heard 
of the war. Did you fellows see her over there?” Both 
men gave him the affirmative, and he went on: 

“Chaplain, the rector in that play wasn’t your kind— 
exactly ; I couldn’t imagine your surrendering the singer, 
short of death,” and his hand in the dark found Jayne’s, 
“any more than I could see you surrendering your faith 
to get what you wanted; and Cavaleni in the play did 
exactly what she wouldn’t have done in real life,— 
but they both had a fight, and won. And, ye gods! 
what acting! Well, Doris Keane opens here in ‘Ro- 
mance’ to-night. Let’s help brighten her home-coming. 
She missed our parade, but that wasn’t her fault, and 
she doesn’t need to miss us altogether. Now,” drop- 
ping even the suggestion of facetiousness, and falling 
into a tone of reminiscence, he went on, “I’d like to see 
whether Cavaleni will speak to me as she did in old 
London.” 


178 THE FURNACE 


It cost a fortune to get the tickets. The house had 
been sold out for a week, but Haig’s old newspaper re- 
lationships finally saved the day, and they landed at 
last in a first balcony box. They spent an evening of 
unalloyed enjoyment. Leaving the theater, the colonel 
said, “She speaks the same language, but I tae to 
hear better !” 

Had Malcolm Frank been looking in the right direc- 
tion and at the right time that night he would most cer- 
tainly have lost much of the glory of the acting of Doris 
Keane. As the three friends entered their box, a young 
woman, seated in a loge directly across, started up, and 
then, excusing herself, hastily withdrew. When she 
returned, just a moment after the electric clusters had 
dimmed, she dropped into the chair her escort had cour- 
teously vacated as he moved into her former seat. 
Each time the curtain dropped she anticipated the 
lights. Yes, had Colonel Frank looked in the right 
direction at the right time that night he might have 
missed much of ‘‘Romance.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


Mess left at midnight on the Express. 

“Good luck, fellows,” he said, as they stood to- 
gether on the lower platform, “good luck!’ and with 
an exaggerated shake of his head, “Here’s hoping the 
papers don’t get me into the story. It will be my 
obituary if they do, and winter is at hand!” 

“Yes, here’s hoping,” replied Brant, “that you're 
dead as a mackerel with the pirates you serve before 
you hit horseshoe curve!” 

A little later, and just before Haig separated from 
Jayne at the subway entrance, the latter queried, “What 
is Malcolm going to do? He’s so quiet that I know he 
is going to do something. I would be sorry to see him 
make a break with the company. He has a great chance 
to do good and get on. This strike will be over pres- 
ently. Then will be the time for constructive work 
and the colonel is the most valuable man in the industry 
when that hour comes.”’ 

“T don’t know what the old boy has in his bean,” an- 
swered Brant slowly, ‘“‘and I’m not half as sure now as 
I was this morning, before some of those social quacks 
got through prescribing, that I would like to tell him. 
I’m just sure of one thing,—the country needs to know 
the facts. Perhaps when our commission gets through 
we will understand why Frank stuck to the company.” 

“Well,” ejaculated Bruce, looking the amazement he 
felt, “the world do move!’ 

179 


180 THE FURNACE 


But the commission to get through had to get 
started, and for a time the starting seemed a long way 
off. The conference had been given wide publicity. 
Newspaper men were not present, but the copy released 
by the chaplain’s department, in the parlance of edi- 
torial rooms, “went big.”’ The presence of the assistant 
superintendent from the Oldsburg mills was not pub- 
lished, but it could not be kept altogether a secret, and 
when word of it reached the general offices of the com- 
pany there was a near riot. But James Judson was as 
good as his word, and the shock had spent itself before 
it reached Malcolm. 

But so much commotion disturbed greatly the peace 
of mind of certain distinguished leaders in ecclesiastical 
circles, and these leaders made their fears felt at the 
headquarters of the United World Movement. “You 
will have trouble enough,” they cautioned, “the general 
church meetings were about all you could weather. 
You have been given clear definitions of your field and 
the scope of your activities. Don’t enter new fields. 
There’s a wide difference of opinion among churchmen 
themselves as to whether industrial relations are a legit- 
imate sphere for organized church interference or 
even investigation. The questions involved in the steel 
strike are technical; the issues can be met only by spe- 
cialists. Let the government go forward with its Con- 
gressional investigation, and let the United World 
Movement remain where it can command united sup- 
‘port and a respectful hearing because it speaks with the 
authority of training and knowledge.” 

It cannot be said that the head of the Industrial Bu- 
reau had been wildly enthusiastic over the action of the 


THE FURNACE 181 


conference appointing the special commission. The 
fact that the Colonel, a company official, suggested it 
helped to reconcile him to the idea, but he listened with 
a more than an open mind to the objectors and it is 
hard to say just what his final decision would have been 
had a certain incident not occurred. 

At a meeting of the Movement’s executive commit- 
tee called to consider finally the request of the con- 
ference for the naming of a commission to investigate 
the strike, among those who argued against the or- 
ganization’s having anything at all to do with the mat- 
ter was a clergyman from a center of the steel in- 
dustry. He made a strong and fair plea until he 
reached his conclusion, when he said: 

“To authorize this commission would be not only to 
enter a new field, a dangerous field, a field that as I see 
it is not ours; but it would be a slap in the face of some 
of the finest church-men and philanthropists in the 
country. It would serve notice on these men that their 
methods are questioned; their moral integrity doubted. 
By no stretch of the imagination could this proposed 
action help the United World Movement.” 

Chaplain Jayne felt himself change under the words 
of the speaker, and when he had finished, was instantly 
on his feet, but the general secretary, claiming, as he 
seldom did, the right of seniority, was the first to speak. 

“Do I understand the Doctor to intimate that this 
movement will suffer,—suffer perhaps the withdrawal 
of moral and financial support,—if it investigates the 
steel strike? that great Christian laymen will resent our 
enquiring carefully, impartially, after the facts?” and 
with impressive frankness the clergyman answered: 


182 LHE TORNACE 


“That is exactly what I mean, and beyond that, such 
an inquiry will make the task of these men harder, give 
comfort to alien elements of our population that have 
no part with us in ideals and standards of living, and 
perhaps delay settlement of the strike, though it is cer- 
tainly on its last legs already.” 

Searl Ballard had remained standing while the other 
had spoken, and now in a voice that all who were close 
to him came quickly to associate with the dynamic, im- 
perative action that made him their ideal of leadership, 
—a voice at once quiet and restless, deliberate and im- 
patient, he said: 

“As I see it, the question for us to decide is not, will 
the United World Movement be injured by such a 
program as this request contemplates, but, is there a 
chance to help a sad social and industrial situation by 
going forward? The question is not only, what will 
these honored and, we believe, honest, but powerful, 
church laymen think about us and perhaps refuse to do 
for us, but it is, as well, what. will these workers now 
out on strike, aliens to be sure, ignorant often, and 
helpless enough so far as hurting us is concerned, but 
human souls, nevertheless;—what will these workers 
think if we refuse? 

“T don’t know a thing about this strike that headlines 
have not told me, and that means that I’m prejudiced 
against the strikers, for I’m an American citizen whose 
relatives fought in every war since Bunker Hill, and 
I am against the disloyalty that seems now to be lead- 
ing this steel war in the Middle West. But I can’t see 
any reason under the sun why the great industry should 
oppose such an investigation as is proposed here—an 


THE FURNACE 183 


investigation that we are bound to see is made by hon- 
est, competent, American, Christian men and women. 
An investigation that before it can become an action 
of this body must pass through both the hands and 
minds of this committee,—a committee that not by the 
widest stretch of the imagination could be called radi- 
cal. 

“Mr. Chairman, are there any labor leaders, any 
strikers here, to protest against the proposed investiga- 
tion?” | 

“There are none that I know of,—there are none,” 
the presiding officer replied. 

“Then, sir,” concluded the General Secretary, with 
that fine courtesy and loyalty that endeared him to those 
who stood by his side, “I am ready to support the 
recommendation that Chaplain Jayne may have to bring 
this matter finally before us.” 

There was an interval of silent expectancy. It was 
quite generally known that the director of the Industrial 
Bureau had reached no conclusion before that meeting 
had been called. The most encouragement that even 
Brant had been able to wring from him had been the 
statement that he would let the trustees reach a decision 
uninterfered with: that his own final action would be 
based very largely upon the developments of the meet- 
ing itself, 

Now that Dr. Ballard had put the proposition’ 
squarely up to him, giving him the opportunity to 
practically indicate the course of action for the body, 
no one doubted what the general secretary’s support 
would do for whatever recommendation the chaplain 
might make—the trustees waited in uncertainty for the 


184 THE FURNACE 


word of their director. But from that gentleman’s 
mind all uncertainty had been removed. He arose and 
said quietly : 

“Because I do not believe the United World Move- 
ment can afford to refuse, because I have come to see 
clearly in the last thirty minutes that the United World 
Movement has here a far-reaching ministry,—a minis- 
try so far-reaching that I am unable now to envision it, 
I urge favorable action. I recommend first that a spe- 
cial commission of nine people, the names to be sub- 
mitted to this committee for final review and confirma- 
tion, be authorized and organized to investigate fully 
the steel strike and to get the facts. Second, that the 
report when finally adopted by this executive committee 
be published.” 

And though there was still opposition, particularly to 
the second part of the recommendation, this was the 
form in which the resolution was finally adopted. 

“Man! but I prayed for your poor uncertain soul,” 
said Haig Brant, when he heard the news, “‘and who 
says that even a preacher gets beyond prayer?” 

The organization of the commission was pushed 
rapidly. The work, if it was to be done at all, and 
particularly if it was to be done thoroughly, must be 
begun quickly. As Chaplain Jayne had announced in- 
formally to his friends at their dinner after the con- 
ference, Doctor Justice was asked to accept the chair- 
manship, and the entire personnel of that commission 
as finally elected by the Executive Committee, which in 
every instance was representative of the church’s ac- 
credited leadership, was generally of outstanding dis- 
tinction and training as well. 


THE FURNACE 18s 


One of Bruce Jayne’s first suggestions to Doctor 
Justice was that Brainard Roberts’ organization be 
drawn upon for technical experts and trained investiga- 
tors. “Let us spare no expense; let us spare nothing to 
make this investigation ‘fool-proof,’ scientific and 
sound, more than superficially true,” and the chairman 
had replied: 

“Good! we need Roberts in this. Of course the re- 
port must be ours; every line of it; every word of it; 
every conclusion; ours by first-hand participation, re- 
search and study; ours so that we are bound, legally 
and morally bound, to its last word. But for the co- 
operation and assistance that any such commission must 
have, let us call in only the best,’ and a little later it 
was the discriminating Doctor who asked the cabinet 
of the United World Movement to assign Major Haig 
Brant for all of his time as secretary of the commis- 
sion. 

The request was granted without a single objector 
appearing, and the major entered upon a period of in- 
tensive activity that was to nearly wreck his health, but 
one that was to round and season his character while it 
gave him a reputation as wide as the socially minded 
reading public. 

As for the chaplain, while not formally a member of 
the commission, he devoted all of his time and concen- 
trated practically every activity of his department upon 
its program. He sat through the public hearings; was 
present at every important interview with representa- 
tives of the two principals, and did as much actual work 
in the field as any regularly employed investigator. 

The field staff, as soon as selected, was organized by 


186 THE FURNACE 


Brant and sent into the strike districts. Fortunate in- 
deed was the commission in having the support of a 
public spirited woman of means who gave discriminat- 
ingly but liberally to further the work of Doctor Justice 
and his associates. 

It was agreed in one of the first meetings of the full 
commission that as soon as possible the leaders of the 
great industry should be interviewed, just as later the 
strikers would be visited. This first interview was not 
difficult to arrange. The chairman, with the director of 
the Bureau, the secretary, and two of the commission- 
ers, was received in the private offices that looked from 
their great height down upon the lesser buildings out 
across the teeming river and crowded harbor to New 
Jersey and the open sea. The visitors were greeted 
courteously, and when they elected to leave were dis- 
missed cordially, 

“We believe you have a chance to do some real good, 
if, as you say you will, you impartially look at and as- 
semble facts. We will send a letter down to our presi- 
dents asking them to put at your disposal such material 
and such information as will help you get hold of the 
real reason for this strike. Also our welfare depart- 
ment will give you its latest reports. However, the 
newspapers carry enough to satisfy the ordinary 
reader.” Thus the interview closed. 

“For a cross section of power,” said the major to 
Bruce, a little later in the day, “did you ever see any- 
thing like that picture gallery in those offices ?—gov- 
ernors, presidents, judges,—why, there were auto- 
graphed photographs of chief justices of the Supreme 
Court of the United States!’ 


THE FURNACE 137 


But here the chaplain took command of the conversa- 
tion. “You make me tired, Haig,” he said, with some- 
thing of the spit of a machine gun, “you make me tired, 
—awtul tired. Why not? Are men to be judged ad- 
versely, questioned as to their character and deeds, 
because good men trust them? because wise men honor 
them? because great men are their friends? Be con- 
sistent,—what about that autographed picture of Gen- 
eral Pershing on your bedroom wall?—or perhaps 
you've taken it down!” 

“No,” answered Brant quietly, and when Brant an- 
swered any one quietly it was ominous. ‘No, I haven’t 
taken it down and I don’t intend to. You don’t get me, 
and you ought to. Here it is! Look who I am, and 
look who they are. What chance has a ‘hunky’ with a 
setup like that? Far be it from me to question the in- 
tegrity of our courts, though there have been some most 
disturbing decisions recently, and far be it from me to 
question the integrity of any public man, but when 
steel has a picture gallery like that, it is high time for 
the church or somebody else to hand ‘John Polinski’ a 
tintype or two,—I’ll tell the world!” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


Vso aay a few days after the interview with the 
great organization the entire commission went 
to the strike center. “Arrange your affairs to give un- 
divided time to the great task we have been assigned. 
Come prepared to remain at least a week. Our investi- 
gators are assembling volumes of material. This will 
of course be given attention, but our particular program 
should be first-hand investigation and open hearings.” 
Thus Doctor Justice had written his associates in call- 
ing them together. 

The newspapers of the city to which they went gave 
only slight attention to the announcement of the arrival 
of the commission, and the commissioners were not 
long in discovering that they were not regarded with 
any degree of enthusiasm by the general public, nor by 
company officials. Rev. Paul Arthouse, a local clergy- 
man who had shown a fearless interest in every detail 
of the strike from the beginning, met with the investi- 
gators at the opening of their first session. 

“The city is a little nervous because of your presence. 
The people are seventy-five per cent or more against the 
strike,—for reasons you will discover. They believe 
the men are whipped now. Without questioning your 
good intentions they feel that your coming in at this 
stage can do no good, can only serve to give comfort 
to the strikers. I say this is the feeling of the city 


generally. Naturally it is the sentiment of the industry, 
188 


THE FURNACE 189 


but more it is the judgment of all classes not directly 
related to the workers, and it is unquestionably the con- 
viction of two-thirds of our preachers.” 

Mr. Arthouse hesitated, and concluded, “Personally 
Lam glad you came. I thank God you came, and I say, 
God pity the Christian Church if you fail to get and 
tell this story.” The man’s eyes spoke even more than 
his lips. He was to suffer much for his refusal to ac- 
cept unchallenged the propaganda of one of the great 
strike’s principals, but he was of a moral fiber that in 
other times not even the flames of martyrdom could 
destroy. 

“You have not over-spoken yourself, Arthouse,’’ one 
of the commissioners answered, “I came in on Saturday 
and went to one of your greatest churches on Sunday 
morning. I heard a sermon that belongs with the Dark 
Ages. A sermon from a man who talked like a thumb- 
screw manipulator of the Inquisition. Here is a choice 
passage from this modern disciple of the Galilean: 

““Let these preachers of sedition and riot be run to 
earth! Let these foreign defamers of the fair name of 
our city be sought out like evil beasts and when the pun- 
ishment suits the crime, let them be strung up as de- 
serters and traitors, —these were the words of my Sun- 
day morning preacher as he dealt with the strike. 

“No, we are not wanted here, but we are needed,” he 
concluded. 

The daily order of procedure as adopted by the com- 
mission called for open hearings in the morning, when 
representatives of the industry, the men on strike, the 
workers loyal to the organization, and spokesmen for 
the general public might be heard: field work by the 


190 THE FURNACE 


commissioners in the afternoon, when by twos the men 
and women went into the strike districts to visit the 
mills, the local officials of the municipalities and of the 
company, as well as the leaders and the rank and file 
of the strikers; and finally the evening when the com- 
mission reconvened to compare notes and make a daily 
summary. | 

From the beginning the investigators found the 
strikers eager to testify; the general public and its rep- 
resentatives reluctant, and the leaders of the industry 
unwilling if not outspokenly hostile. As the chairman 
expressed it at the conclusion of the second day of 
work: 

“These men, these strikers, know they are whipped. 
They won’t confess it, of course. They are eager to 
get their story into the record, eager as drowning men 
to get hold of something, anything, that will keep their 
heads above the flood. We must not forget this as we 
listen to them, and we must check against their testi- 
mony with special care. The company and the public 
generally have the very natural attitude of near-con- 
querors. From their viewpoint the less we get and 
the quicker we get it and get out the better.” 

The testimony at the hearings was illuminating, often 
startling, and sometimes appalling. With no excep- 
tions every bit of vital evidence was later followed 
through by the commissioners in their capacity as in- 
dividual investigators. 

The first witness appearing, and of course all testi- 
mony was voluntary, was a retired employer of labor 
who, while not in any way connected with the great 
steel organization, expressed clearly and somewhat in 


THE FURNACE 191 


particular the viewpoint of the company, insisting that 
this viewpoint was representative generally of the local 
citizenry. When it became apparent that, conscious 
of its strength, the industry would allow none of its 
representatives to appear before the investigators, the 
testimony of James Henry Smith became of more than 
ordinary value and importance. Invited to express him- 
self freely Mr. Smith said: 

“The handling of labor, particularly foreign-speak- 
ing labor, is never easy. Always an employer is a large 
target for the fluent, self-seeking, soft-handed labor 
leader, who, speaking the worker’s language and know- 
ing his superstitions and prejudices, can influence him 
to act against his own interests as well as against those 
of the company. The refusal of this industry to treat 
with outsiders is in harmony with the policy—and I 
may say a policy that I subscribe to,—of insisting upon 
your right to run your own business. The fact is that 
if a man wants his business to succeed, he cannot afford 
to have any other policy.” 

Mr. Smith was asked whether he endorsed the re- 
fusal of the organization to meet the strike leaders 
when the President of the United States, in an effort to 
avert the impending disaster, had publicly requested 
such a meeting. He replied: 

“Yes, Ido. At the risk of being misunderstood by 
the country this action was taken, taken for the sake of 
principle, and knowing that the President did not under- 
stand the real issue involved.” 

Following Mr. Smith one of the local strike leaders 
came to the stand and presenting the viewpoint of the 
men, insisted that “while the record shows that they 


192 THE FURNACE 


do not make such a selection, if they want a jackass to 
represent them, that right belongs to them: not the right 
to tell the company how to run its business, but the in- 
alienable right to tell the company what they want, 
what they think they ought to have. The right to speak 
through spokesmen, spokesmen of their own choosing, 
spokesmen who cannot be discharged for speaking. 
They tell us the present plan is O. K.—well, who thinks 
itis? Not the thousands of men who are directly con- 
cerned, and who are striking against it.” 

The testimony before the commission as to hours and 
wages left no room for doubt as to the fact that the 
workers felt that they had a grievance; a grievance so 
great that they were ready to sacrifice comfort and even 
the necessities of a bare existence to seek redress. That 
skilled, individual workers were receiving amazingly 
large wages, while thousands of others, hundreds of 
them with helpless dependents, were earning less than 
enough to keep them in decency, was established beyond 
contradiction, as was the further fact that the country 
at large had an utterly mistaken idea of what the actual 
wage and labor conditions in steel were. 

As to the tales of physical violence,—stories of 
crimes committed against the helpless and innocent as 
well as against the active participants in the bitter strug- 
gle,—they increased in number daily and yielded, to the 
investigating eye, pictures so sordid in their details as 
to leave the unpartisan observer nauseated when not 
despairing. 

Nor was the story a one-sided tale. Monsters were 
released by the passions of that industrial war to work 
the will of hate; to prowl down the trails of arson, rape 


THE FURNACE 193 


and murder; monsters who bore the sign of both con- 
tending camps upon their foreheads. But always the 
hand of authority and the will of power were against 
the worker who had dared to leave the belching furnace 
to give voice to his grievance and to join the forces 
that rallied under the flag of protest. 

On the morning of the last day of public hearings 
the Rev. Arthouse requested the privilege of making a 
statement. 

“Have you weighed the import of the testimony 
brought here yesterday by a representative of more than 
five hundred spies furnished by one organization to the 
great company in this struggle—testimony that only a 
chance discovery made available to your commission ?”’ 
and Mr. Arthouse read from a copy of the official pro- 
ceedings of the preceding day the letter of an ‘“‘under- 
cover” worker: 

““My instructions from the company sending me on 
a secret mission among the steel strikers was, “We 
want you to stir up as much bad feeling as you possibly 
can between the Serbians and Italians. Spread data 
among the Serbians that the Italians are going back to 
work. Call up every question you can in reference to 
racial hatred between these two nationalities. Daily 
maxim sent to every one of our workers to-day: con- 
serve your forces on a set point; begin before the other 
fellow starts.” ’ 

“This,” concluded the minister in tones of indigna- 
tion that trembled hot with the fever of a clean man’s 
wrath, “this is our fighting front; this our mailed fist, 
—rather, our assassin’s stiletto for these people who 
ask for a chance to be decent and the right to live a bit 


194 THE FURNACE 


above the level of the animal. Sleuths of questionable 
character to say the least spy upon them, seek for evi- 
dence, always easier for the unscrupulous to manufac- 
ture than to secure honestly. 

“That they are not attractive as residents I know as 
well as any man. That some of them are vicious as 
we have been told, you will not doubt when you have 
the information I possess. But, what have we done to 
make them better? We have allowed them to come 
when we have not brought them. We have used them. 
With our twelve-hour day we have made their ‘Amen- 
camzation’ a physical impossibility. Only when dire 
national necessity compelled us, have we granted them 
a measure of equality in treatment and opportunity. 
They brought a blank in their skulls when they came, 
and ours, gentlemen, was the first chance to furnish the 
empty chamber. God pity us for our failure, and God 
save us, if that may be, from the catastrophe our crim- 
inal neglect surely invites!” 

The stirring words of Mr. Arthouse were the first to 
give more than a commonplace emphasis to the com- 
mission’s proceedings. They were not entered upon the 
record; they constituted no evidence, but to silent men 
who sat about that somber chamber they came as a 
message of hope, a prophecy of wiser and more gen- 
erous days. 

Among the steel workers who listened to the speak- 
er’s words and who seemed gradually to take fire under 
them, was a young Hungarian, a World-War veteran, 
maimed for life. He had been a constant attendant on 
the sessions of the commission. Now for the first time 
he signified his desire to be heard. He was one of the 


THE FURNACE 195 


many foreign-born who, not being subject to the draft, 
had nevertheless enlisted in the first enthusiasm of those 
mighty emotional tides which engulfed the country 
when America entered the colossal struggle on the side 
of the Allies. After months of overseas service he had 
returned with an empty sleeve and a deep-seated cough 
to the country he had come to feel regarded him as a 
son. 

Questioned as to his previous relationships, he told 
of his apprenticeship in the mills, and then in halting 
English of how he came to feel himself a new creature 
under the stimulus of the great fraternity of interest 
that leveled the barriers between the classes and races, 
when humanity found in the war a common voice with 
which to give expression to her common trials and pur- 
poses. No pen will ever adequately describe the utter 
pathos of bitterness in the young Hungarian’s accents: 

“But soon all has changed,” he said, “again the boss 
calls me ‘dam’ Hunky’—he treats me better than others, 
because of my arm, but only because of that. ‘Dam’ 
Hunky’ I am; all the good jobs go to Americans,— 
things are no better than before the war. They seem 
worse because we had so believed. What do I want,— 
wages? Yes, but I don’t need money as others do. 
Better hours? Yes, and how can I get on with such 
hours as these perhaps we soon go back to? But more 
than hours and wages I want to be treated like a man. 
I want what I got when I first enlisted. I want to be 
an American!” 

In a rage, forgetting his surroundings, he cried, with 
tears streaming from his eyes, “It is a lie! Iam 
not a ‘Red.’ This is what makes ‘Reds.’ But I fought 





196 THE FURNACE 


for this country. My friends were killed for it. This,”’ 
and he grasped his empty sleeve with his free hand, “‘is 
back somewhere in the dump of a field hospital. Often 
I wish that I were there, with the flag above me, and 
those good words all men spoke of us then covering 
me. 

“They say here the company will run its own busi- 
ness; that they put their money in, that the mills are 
theirs. But who are we? What do we put in? Our 
legs and arms, our skin that burns and shrivels, our 
bodies, our youth, our all. My father died in the mill 
—you remember when tons of molten metal broke loose 
and poured over seven men; buried them so that they 
were never seen again? I stood beside that when the 
priest said the last prayer for their souls. I was a little 
boy. I could not understand when they told me he 
was there in the heart of the dead iron. I tried to see 
his face. But now always I see his face, my father’s 
face, in the oceans of flame that heave within the fur- 
naces and pour from the stacks. Whose business is it? 
Whose business is it? I say it is the business of us all!” 


Following that last open hearing, Chaplain Jayne, ac- 
companied by Haig Brant, drove out to Oldsburg to 
have a last word with Malcolm before the final local 
meeting of the commission and their return to New 
York. , 

As they swung into the narrow street that brought 
them to the mill’s entrance, they were hailed and 
stopped by two mounted officers who sat facing each 
other; their horses neck against neck,—a rather ideal 
arrangement to guard against surprise. 

“What’s your business ?”’ questioned the older of the 


THE FURNACE 197 


two troopers, a sergeant, and his voice seemed familiar 
to both occupants of the car. Before either could 
speak, a figure that had approached rapidly through the 
dusk came up to the machine, and the voice of Mal- 
colm Frank answered quietly: “It is all right, ser- 
geant.” The words of the assistant superintendent 
were electrical. The trooper straightened himself to 
attention, saluted, and replied, ‘““Very well, sir.’’ 

“Did you recognize the sergeant?” questioned Mal- 
colm, as a few minutes later the three men were sepa- 
rating on the steps of the Oldsburg offices. 

“His voice was very familiar,” replied Bruce. 

“Well, it should have been.”’ Malcolm stroked his 
cheek as he spoke. “You've both heard it before. His 
name is Johnson. When he’s sober he makes a good 
soldier.”’ 

At the hard picture brought back by the memory of 
that night in old Montebaur, the men were silent. The 
chaplain recovered his tongue first. 

“There are some things as beastly and brutish as 
that,” he exclaimed. ‘A sad mess we are making of 
the world we so recently saved from enemies we called 
Huns.” 

But Brant seemed unwilling to close the interview in 
despair. He turned a quizzical look on the colonel, 
“Well, there may be some things to be thankful for,— 
even in a night like that at Montebaur,”—both of his 
friends would have occasion to remember that speech, 
—“‘and even in a strike like this. Malcolm,’ he con- 
cluded, “I haven’t seen any angels since I came to this 
valley of death.” 

“Nor have I—lately,” replied the assistant superin- 
tendent soberly. 


CHAPTER XIX 


T midnight, after the brief visit of Bruce and Haig 

with Malcolm, the commissioners were hurrying 

New Yorkward on the “Limited.’”’ The closing ses- 

sion of the commission had been featured by a brief 
statement from the chairman. Said he: 

‘“‘We have such a mass of testimony that it will take 
weeks to put it into shape. Our secretary and Chaplain 
Jayne have our sympathy. In the meantime other dis- 
tricts are to be visited by us personally, and our field 
force will be constantly adding to our material. I feel 
that we have much to be thankful for,’ and he smiled, 
“at least we have survived the facts. Whether the 
country will, remains to be seen.” | 

“A great boy, the Doctor,’’ commented the major 
later, as he sat in the washroom, while Bruce, to avoid 
the early morning congestion, shaved before retiring. 
“Between you, you two sanctified and judicial minds, 
we ought to get out of all the stuff we have and will 
have a report that even my rashness and heterodoxy 
can’t ruin.”’ 

Jayne stopped lathering long enough to remark, 
“Well, I’m not over-optimistic, old stormer, but we'll 
try. What did you make out of Malcolm to-day?” he 
finished. 

After a long interval, during which the chaplain got 
as far as talcum powder, Brant replied, ‘““He’s having 


a—pardon me—nasty time. Between being in love 
198 


THE FURNACE 199 


with an angel and hating himself he doesn’t get much 
hilarity out of life these days. There'll be a smash 
there,—sooner or later. It’s coming. Not even James 
Judson can hold him forever, but when it will come, I 
don’t know; and how ?—well, God knows I don’t want 
to think.”’ . 

“No,” said Bruce, as he put away his kit, “neither do 
I. That man has so vivid, so romantic, so old-fash- 
ioned, a faith in fundamental Americanism, in the free 
opportunity of men under the constitution and flag, that 
I tremble for him when he breaks with the institution 
in which he invested his superb dedication. I can see 
the logic of his reasoning from the beginning until 
now,—his reason for doing exactly as he has. Always 
with him the company and the men have been one; mis- 
understanding each other, fighting each other, broken 
into halves, but belonging to each other, and eventually 
bound to be reunited.”’ 

Bruce stood for a moment deep in thought, and then 
concluded, ‘‘Should he once decide that he has been mis- 
taken, that the halves will never come together, that 
the differences are too great, too fundamental, or that 
one half denies the other,—then God pity him, for he 
will hit bottom!” 

In the morning at ten o’clock the chairman of the 
investigating commission and the director of the Indus- 
trial Bureau came before the executive committee to 
make a preliminary report. Doctor Justice, who had 
other pressing engagements, left after briefly giving the 
history of the commission’s activities to date. 

Following a perfunctory statement of appreciation 
by the chairman, one of the leading forward-movement 


200 THE FURNACE 


secretaries of a great denomination arose and said im- 
pressively, “Brethren, I am deeply concerned. I see 
grave trouble ahead for this movement if the work of 
Doctor Justice.and his associates continues. I have no 
criticism for them. If there is any criticism merited 
we should accept it, for they carry our sanction. But if 
their activities go on, the cause of Christian unity may 
be put back in this country half a century,’ and with 
skill and earnestness he covered again the ground of 
the former meetings, emphasizing the newspaper com- 
ments from the strike area, the futility of any effort 
now to adjust the differences, and pleading for a dis- 
continuance of the entire investigation, saying: 

“We can publish the fact that the stage upon which 
the controversy has entered makes any outside inter- 
ference, particularly that of a religious organization, 
untimely, and that when the present trouble is over we 
will conclude our work. Let us go about our business 
as a United World Movement; complete our organiza- 
tion; prepare to make the further readjustments and 
concessions we must make to hold the denominations 
together behind us. If we do, we may save our life 
in the financial drive just ahead of us.” 

The speech was not only impressive; to a good many 
of the men present it was convincing. After an inter- 
val of silence, not uncomplimentary to the speaker, 
General Secretary Ballard turned to the gentleman who 
had just concluded and with a half smile said: 

“Somewhere I have read, ‘Whosoever will save his 
life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my 
sake, shall find it.’ ”’ 

Instantly the distinguished denominational leader, 


THE FURNACE 201 


with a flush of annoyance mantling his scholarly face, 
rose to reply, but prompt as he was, another had taken 
the initiative from him. As Chaplain Jayne listened 
with only half-concealed anxiety to the strong adverse 
statement which followed the report of Doctor Justice, 
his eyes gradually focused on one man seated at the 
great table,—the latest addition to the Board of Trus- 
tees,—David Strong, numbered among the supreme 
captains of industry, a philanthropist and churchman. 
The securing of his final acceptance of the invitation 
which had been extended to him to serve on the com- 
mittee had been regarded as an achievement in itself. 

As Bruce now watched his finely chiseled features, 
which were habitually masked, he found himself re- 
calling with consternation the fact that the same David 
Strong now controlled the Central Metal Company, 
and that he was a large stockholder in the great steel 
corporation. What would he do now? ‘That speech 
fitted him exactly,—and like a flash came the thought, 
—it was made for him! 

But now the gentleman in question was speaking for 
himself,—with a deferential bow the clergyman who 
had risen to answer the cryptic quotation of Searl Bal- 
lard gave right of way to the even more distinguished 
layman. With practically every trustee reaching out 
an imaginary hand of sympathy to the Movement’s gen- 
eral secretary and the departmental director he was so 
loyally supporting, David Strong began: 

“Dr. Ballard’s quotation, which I thought most apt, 
reminds me of another, ‘No man having put his hand 
to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom 
of God.’”’ 


202 THE FURNACE 


The words so quietly spoken, and so unexpectedly, 
were like a bombshell. The speaker hesitated and, as 
one unaccustomed to public speech, searched for words. 
Then he concluded: 

“T do not believe that I would have supported the 
creation of this investigating commission had I been a 
member of this body when that action was taken. I be- 
lieve the church should confine her activities in industry 
to proclaiming the great principles that underlie all right 
relations between men; calling upon them to search their 
hearts; to take account of their actions, and inspiring 
them to do justly at whatever cost. I do not believe 
that immediately, at least, we serve the cause of peace 
and equity by entering a controversy for whatever pur- 
pose—and in this case our purpose is good and only 
good—but a controversy in which some truth will be 
found on both sides. A controversy dealing largely 
with technical problems,—entering a controversy at 
such a time and in such a way that we are practically 
bound to reach conclusions supporting one principal in 
the struggle against the other, thus losing and antago- 
nizing one when we should have retained our tradi- 
tional strategic position so as to rebuke and keep both. 
Rich and poor equally need the Gospel of Jesus and 
His everlasting truth.” 

And now David Strong had dropped another bomb. 
Bruce Jayne wiped his brow and moistened his lips. 
Major Brant, who had been an interested spectator 
throughout the hearing, looked like a man contem- 
plating murder, but the clergyman who had precipitated 
the emotional riot beamed effusively. Again the speaker 
hesitated, and now as though he had struck his tent 


THE FURNACE 203 


and was ready for the last forced march, he concluded: 

“This is my mind, gentlemen :—I may be wrong.” 
He seemed to allow just a moment for introspection. 
“T begin to see some difficulties in the path of such a 
program, and perhaps there must be exceptions made. 
There are at least problems in the way of its applica- 
tion. But, be this as it may, and whatever my academic 
convictions may be, the quotations stand. We face not 
a theory, but a fact. We have told the world and 
promised ourselves that we will investigate this strike 
and publish our findings. Gentlemen, unless we want 
to destroy this movement morally, we have got to keep 
our word.” 

“Ye gods!” gasped Brant, as he assembled himself 
in the chaplain’s office a few minutes later after the 
committee had adjourned without a motion being 
made. “One more and I would have been a corpse. 
As it was, only the fact that I was beyond moving kept 
me from giving the old boy a double-cheeked French 
salute.” 

“Yes,” said Bruce Jayne, as he collapsed over his 
desk in a very good imitation of complete exhaustion, 
“and what about the brother who ‘viewed with alarm’? 
—have a heart!’ 

“Well,” snorted Brant, “virtue hath her own re- 
ward. I should worry! You just thank God for us 
both that Searl Ballard and David Strong learned 
Bible verses when they were kids.” 

Scarcely had Brant finished and hurried to his own 
office than he came rushing back: 

“Come at once,” he whispered. “As you love God, 
be quick and quiet and come to my office.” There was 


204 THE FURNACE 


no mistaking that note in the major’s voice. He spoke 
as a man fairly beside himself with concern. Jayne 
followed Brant hurriedly down the corridor. At the 
latter’s office door he stopped. Within a man was 
sobbing. 

When the door swung open, an appalling sight 
greeted him. A huge, hulking figure sat huddled in the 
office chair,—hands and arms streaming down its sides, 
limbs broken backward under it; chest sagging into its 
lower torso, and the great head overturned on its chin, 
which plowed into the swollen throat and choked the 
sobs into half-gasps. Brant, who had been just ahead 
of his chief, laid a hand on the collapsed shoulder and 
said: 

“Mr. Patrick, this is Chaplain Jayne; tell him your 
story.” 

Thus Bruce Jayne met Abe Patrick, organizer of the 
great strike, the captain of a score of successful labor 
battles, trusted comrade of half a million toilers, greater 
in heart than in mind, but a genius in the crude humani- 
ties of industrial conflicts and born a leader of men. 
The interview that followed the introduction was the 
first of its kind, and of its kind the most unique in the 
history of the Church. But for one refusal, it might 
have been the opening of the industrial “millennium.” 

When Abe Patrick came to life, he became dynamic 
agony: ‘““Preacher,” he cried in a whisper, and not once 
during the hour of that conference did he lift his voice 
above that whisper, “I have come here for men and for 
their women and kids—men who are growing des- 
perate, men who are cold and starving, but who don’t 


THE FURNACE 205 


care,—who don’t care for themselves any more, but 
who live in a hell because their families are hungry. 

“And, Preacher, these men have followed me out, 
have stood on my word and my faith through desper- 
ate weeks, and now, when the battle is lost, I can’t lead 
them back. The country has been poisoned against us, 
against me and against them. The corporation has 
controlled every channel of publicity. Has branded us 
with the red of treason. Has beaten us,—yes, beaten 
us, but beaten us with lies. And that doesn’t bother 
me, Preacher; I can take a beating; I have lived on 
beatings since I was a colliery kid, and always I have 
gotten up out of the dirt to fight again. But, God! 
Preacher, I can’t watch women and children suffer and 
starve. And now, unless the men who followed me out 
can go back,—back to slavery, but back to food,— 
there is death, vast and terrible, in the steel valleys.” 

Thus Abe Patrick released the agony of his soul. 
For his cause he did not despair,—yes, he could rise to 
fight again, but for those who must eat or die, who 
must work now or perish soon, he poured out his an- 
guished heart. Nor were any illusions remaining in his 
mind. He knew himself a discredited leader, and his 
strike a failure. While he came, reserving to himself 
the right to make no terms with the foe for the mo- 
ment triumphant, refusing to surrender his cause, he 
came, willing in his own person to suffer any humilia- 
tion for the people who had followed him. 

“I come to you,” he went on, “you of another faith 
than mine, because you and your companions entered 
our situation uninvited, answered our first suspicions 


206 THE FURNACE 


with good faith, and seem now, of all the institutions in 
the country that might have asked for the truth, to be 
looking for the facts: I came to you because you and 
your commission seem to represent all the churches ; be- 
cause you appear to be a united movement, and, sir, I 
come to you because you came to us in the spirit and 
name of the One who talked about justice and love 
and brotherhood, as though He meant that men, rich 
and poor, high and low, should practice them.” 

While Abe Patrick had poured out his scourged, 
though untamed, soul, Bruce Jayne had listened as a 
man in a strange country might hear of things about 
which he had dreamed, but never hoped to see. He 
sensed the elemental in the hour. Instinctively he felt 
the pulse of a new life stirring. The moment became 
suddenly one of spiritual invitation, the call of an ad- 
venture down untrodden ways in human relationships, 
a challenge to his faith. He saw the lonely distraught 
man before him, but quickly lost him in a vast multitude 
that came surging about the portals of the church 
claiming their birthright and crying for entrance. 
Then, as from another world he returned, and in a 
voice that caused Haig Brant to marvel—so strong, yet 
tender; so eager, yet restrained, had it become—he an- 
swered : 

“Mr. Patrick, you have broken my heart and opened 
my eyes. What would you have us do?’ And Brant 
knew that the man whose scar ran now as it always did 
in times of supreme emotion, like a red river of pain, 
or danger, across his temple, had made some high cove- 
nant with his soul. 

The two men waited on their strange visitor. He 


THE FURNACE | 207 


seemed dazed, swept into helpless silence for the mo- 
ment by the sudden acceptance of his plea. For weeks 
he had fought against refusal; his mind had become an 
armed camp of defense. Now, like the opening of 
leaden skies through which the sun appears, his de- 
spair was shot through with the hope that came in the 
acknowledgment and invitation of the chaplain. His 
countenance changed, and with a new note, a resurging 
note of eagerness, he said: 

“Take the cause of these men out of our hands. Go 
to the corporation in their behalf. Forget the basis we 
have made the fight on; the askings of our strike com- 
mittee. Secure the terms that you as commissioners 
believe are just and humane; the best terms you can se- 
cure. Forget us, the leaders. We will take ourselves 
out of the situation. We will become as men that 
never were. And if the corporation will accept you as 
mediators, mediators unhandicapped by restrictions, we 
of the strike committee before we retire will lead the 
men back to the mills unconditionally, and work will 
resume while you negotiate.” 

Again Bruce Jayne was swept by tides of emotion, 
—tides that carried him beyond all previous spiritual 
experiences of his life. He felt the moment as the vin- 
dication of the founders of the United World Move- 
ment. He accepted the invitation of Abe Patrick as 
the seal of God’s approval in the acknowledgment of 
men, who, won by the first gesture of brotherhood, 
turned their backs upon traditional suspicion and cast 
themselves into the arms of the church. He seemed 
to see the iron heavens opening and the hatreds of a 
thousand years give way before the spirit of the Gali- 


208 THE FURNACE 


lean. With difficulty he shook himself free of a mood 
that called for a cloister rather than a conference, but 
Brant marveled again at the self-mastery of the man 
who, when he spoke, said: 

“But, Mr. Patrick, this unprecedented thing that you 
ask,—how can it be done? Again I say it,—you have 
stirred me as I think I have never been stirred before. 
I have difficulty to control my enthusiasms when I think 
of the possibilities that lie in this meeting,—difficulty 
to think clearly. But how can we translate into sober 
action these declarations of yours and your own emo- 
tions? I have nothing with which to go to my asso- 
ciates. You speak bravely, heroically, but for your- 
self—what—” and the strike leader interrupted eag- 
erly: 

“But I speak for half a million men; half a million 
men who will do in this what I tell them to. I see your 
difficulty. Listen—I will go back and get my com- 
mittee together and secure from these representatives 
of more than a score of national unions confirmation 
of what I have said and official authorization for the 
proposition I have made. Then will you act?” And 
like shot answering shot came the chaplain’s answer: 

“Tf you deliver on that proposition, Mr. Patrick, as 
I know our commission and this Movement, we will 
act! We will act and nothing but an absolute refusal 
from the corporation can block a new deal in the steel 
industry. Yes,—bring back that confirmation and au- 
thorization, and I pledge you our acceptance.” 

Hours after the termination of that epochal inter- 
view and the precipitous departure of the strike leader, 
Bruce Jayne and Haig Brant moved as men who 


THE FURNACE 209 


walked on holy ground. Then came inevitable reac- 
tions and depressing fears,—the fear of repudiation on 
the part of Patrick’s strike associates, the fear of re- 
fusal at the hands of the Movement’s Executive Com- 
mittee, the fear of rejections at the headquarters of the 
industry. 

The chaplain came to the conclusion that in anticipa- 
tion of at least the possible return of Mr. Patrick, he 
could not afford to keep General Secretary Ballard and 
the chairman of the executive committee in ignorance 
of the unusual conference he had participated in, and 
so on the morning of the day following the meeting in 
Brant’s office he secured an interview with his two su- 
periors. He found them amazed and sympathetic. 
They cautioned him against committing the Movement 
to any policy for final action, but suggested that should 
the strike committee confirm its chairman’s proposition, 
the investigating commission might ascertain from the 
officers of the great company whether such mediation 
would be acceptable. Should assent be given to the 
informal proposal, the matter could then come formally 
before the executive committee. Should there be a re- 
fusal, nothing further could be done, and the records 
of the Movement would be clear of an embarrassing 
reference to the proposition. 

“Perhaps,” said the chairman of the executive com- 
mittee, “God is preparing a unique and powerful min- 
istry for us,—but let us be judicial and cautious. At 
this critical time we dare take no unnecessary risks.” 

And the chaplain replied, “Surely, no organization on 
earth can refuse the human plea of this situation. 
With the strike leaders out of it, the last and the great 


210 THE FURNACE 


objection of the employers is removed. If Patrick 
comes back as he promised, steel must say ‘Yes.’ ”’ 

Haig Brant, who sat by, a silent party to the con- 
versation, smiled his old, half-cynical smile as Jayne 
concluded, but deep in his heart he longed for some- 
thing of his old comrade’s faith. And so the matter 
was left waiting on word from the West. 


CHAPTER XX 


iif was in the midst of the suspense attendant upon 
the interview with Abe Patrick that Chaplain 
Jayne’s office was favored with another unexpected visi- 
tor,—a young woman. She came one morning, unan- 
nounced save for a hurried call from General Secretary 
Ballard’s office, and a few minutes later the General 
Secretary himself ushered her in and introduced the di- 
rector of the Industrial Bureau to her. Had Malcolm 
Frank been present, he would have experienced one of 
the shocks of his life, for Gene Stanton it was who, 
when Dr. Ballard retired, began the interview by say- 
ing: 

“Chaplain Jayne, I am in deep trouble.” 

Gene Stanton, surely, for among all other women 
she could not be mistaken, but not as Gene Stanton had 
she come down the corridor with the General Secretary, 
and not as Gene Stanton did Chaplain Jayne recognize 
her as the young woman who had attracted his atten- 
tion and indeed the attention of all eyes in the opening 
session of the now memorable Hotel Pennsylvania In- 
dustrial Conference. 

“Chaplain Jayne, I am in deep trouble,” the girl re- 
peated. “I am between the obligation that a hostess or 
the daughter of a hostess feels for the confidence of a 
guest, and the responsibility, the good faith, that binds 
one to a friend,’—the last word she said softly,— 


“and to a cause. Yes, I am in deep trouble, but 
ail 


212 THE FURNACE 


3 


I have made my choice,” and she smiled radiantly ;— 
not since Faith died had he been so kindled by a smile. 

“T am for friendship, and even more I am for a 
cause.” She continued then in sure and positive sen- 
tences. “Yesterday at tea mother entertained Mr. 
Randolph Ranson of Buffalo,—general secretary of a 
society our family had been interested in. He talked at 
length about the steel strike,—against it. But he had 
even more to say about the investigating commission of 
the United World Movement and hinted at grave dis- 
closures that would soon be made. 

“Later in the evening I sat with mother while Mr. 
Ranson, who had come for his annual subscription,” 
and the girl laughed, “went into details with regard to 
the intimations he had dropped earlier. He said that 
he had sent special investigators into the offices of the 
Movement—into your offices; that very damaging ma- 
terial had been found; that without doubt radicals and 
worse were employed here, employed in responsible po- 
sitions, and that the commission investigating the steel 
strike was in the hands of ‘Reds.’ 

“Mother seemed surprised that I was so interested in 
Mr. Ranson.” The girl colored as she continued, “I 
have never admired him, never cared for his story. 
Perhaps I have greatly misjudged him. Certainly very 
good people give him their support—but always he has 
appeared to me as chiefly a fighter of windmills, or— 
a parasite. But last night his story held my attention, 
you may be sure, and when he gave mother the galley 
proofs of the charges he has already sent in secret to 
the offices of the steel organizations, as well as to other 
great industrial leaders, I was even more interested.” 


THE FURNACE ais 


Here Gene Stanton became greatly azitated, but as 
words seemed to fail her for a moment, she took from 
her muff a package of documents, hesitated an instant, 
and then impulsively thrust them into the hands of the 
chaplain saying: 

“Here are the findings of that miserable man,—I 
took them from mother’s desk, leaving her a note tell- 
ing her just what I had done,—and would do. Oh!’ 
and the crimson that had mantled the girl’s cheeks now 
swept like a red flood over her forehead and throat, “‘it 
was a terrible thing to do, but it would have been 
wrong, terribly wrong, not to have done it!” 

She rose now, and with a regal lift of her glorious 
head went on, “It is just a little cruel for mother,— 
she will have some explanations to make for me when 
she can’t return the documents, or perhaps, as she has 
often done before, she will find a way to shield her im- 
petuous daughter, but,’’ and the old smile returned, 
“there is no doubt now about these copies being hope- 
lessly ‘lost? to Mr. Ranson. Very likely the check which 
is his chief concern will be larger than it would have 
been, and that will atone for the loss of these,’’ and 
she tapped the papers that Jayne had placed upon his 
desk as he had risen with his guest and continued : 7 

“Randolph Ranson has missed father’s annual con- 
tribution this year, and has not been able to understand 
father’s absence when he calls. I think he hoped these 
charges would come into father’s hands. Do what you 
think best with them; they are yours. Forget how they 
came to you,—please ?” 

The eager plea in the girl’s eyes found a satisfying 
answer in the face of the man who had heard her 


214 THE FURNACE 


through without a single comment, and she concluded, 
“T am grateful for your patience and I hope,—oh, I 
hope your commission will succeed. There are many of 
us hoping—and praying. Good-by!”’ 

The girl had gone before Bruce Jayne had recovered 
from his first great surprise at her coming. Often 
again he would recall to the last detail that strange in- 
terview,—one of the few in his life that he had failed 
to dominate. | 

As to the documents his visitor left with him, they 
compared, in matter and general spirit, with many 
anonymous attacks already in hand. Their form, how- 
ever, was quite different, and gave evidence of rather 
more than ordinary ability and intellectual training on 
the part of the “agent.” They constituted a serious at- 
tack on three of the leading figures in the steel strike 
investigation; definitely charged the United World 
Movement with subserviency to certain “radical ele- 
ments in its leadership,’ and called upon those who 
received the material to refuse all financial and moral 
support to its appeals. Accompanying the documents 
was the carbon of a letter addressed to one of the off- 
cials of the steel organization which revealed the mo- 
tive behind the attack and which read as follows: 

“T am enclosing copies of interviews with certain 
gentlemen in important positions in the United World 
Movement. You will be particularly interested in the 
material, because this organization proposes to raise 
hundreds of millions of dollars for its work. I am sure 
you and your friends will be interested. Please return 
the enclosures.” 


While Bruce Jayne’s personal knowledge of the ac- 


THE FURNACE 215 


tivities of Randolph Ranson was limited, he was sur- 
prised to find him in the role of a sleuth, particularly 
in the unsavory role of a rather crude currier for a 
great corporation’s favor at the expense of a religious 
movement and by the use of material that even casual 
investigation at first hand would have revealed as abso- 
lutely misleading where it was not utterly false. 

But Jayne did not find himself greatly aroused 
against the man Ranson. He accepted the appraise- 
ment of the young woman and dismissed him. As to 
the charges, he reread them, decided at once that noth- 
ing could be done immediately, that action must wait 
on future developments, and with increasing admiration 
for the courage and sound judgment of the one who 
had, at the risk of great embarrassment to herself, 
placed the material in his hands, he filed the documents 
among his personal papers without even informing 
Haig Brant of their existence. 

One thing had impressed the chaplain in that rather 
unusual conference—his visitor’s reference—the very 
manner of it, to a “friend,” a friend who was some- 
how involved in that report. Following his curiosity 
he read the galley proofs for a third time without being 
able to locate the possible “friend.” Only four men 
were involved,—three directly connected with the New 
York organization. Aside from general charges and 
innuendoes affecting the entire management and im- 
pugning, indirectly at least, the motive of the United 
World Movement, only one other man was involved in 
the report, Malcolm Frank. Malcolm Frank was re- 
ferred to as “a hybrid company official with some real 
military distinctions, but a poor sense of honor, for he 


216 THE FURNACE 


attended and participated in the radical industrial con- 
ference which initiated the movement for a church- 
men’s investigation of the steel strike. He is a close 
friend of the director of the movement’s Industrial 
Bureau, and of Haig Brant, the socialist who serves as 
secretary to the Investigating Commission. Also there 
is now evidence in the hands of a trusted official of the 
Bancroft Steel Company proving that he is sympathetic 
with the strikers.” 

As Bruce Jayne read that paragraph for the third 
time, a great light broke upon him. He saw again the 
eager face of Colonel Frank as he waited for informa- 
tion concerning Gene Stanton, while the three friends 
sat together after the closing session of that fateful con- 
ference. He remembered Malcolm’s sorrow of disap- 
pointment when she could not be found,—and then he 
remembered his visitor of the morning, and remem- 
bering her, saw her again as she sat that day in the 
glory of her ardent youth among the conference dele- 
gates. 

“No,” he exclaimed, unconsciously speaking aloud, 
“no! it can’t be possible.” But for hours he could not 
escape from a growing conviction which as it grew was 
more and more companioned by fear,—fear for his 
friend who stood now so bitterly alone in the valley 
of trouble and despair. Finally he gave his secretary a 
scrap of paper on which was a telephone number and 
aname. “Call me just as soon as you get that through,” 
he said casually. 

A. few minutes later the voice that had so stirred him 
that morning challenged him again,—over the wire. 
“Pardon me,” he said, “but you must trust me and 


THE FURNACE 217 


Know that your confidence will be kept. For reasons 
that are imperative I must know one thing,—have you 
been in the strike district lately, as a special investi- 
gator or worker, perhaps?” and the voice, now vibrant 
and low, but clear as a soft-toned bell, replied: 

“T trust you,—yes,”’ and then, after just the sugges- 
tion of a pause, “Chaplain Jayne, you must trust me.” 

Bruce Jayne turned from the telephone to sit for 
many minutes, head in his hands and bowed over his 
desk. At last, shaking himself free from what ap- 
peared to be a painful revery, he rose, slipped into his 
overcoat, and then, standing with his hand upon the 
door-knob, and speaking to some one, though he was 
quite alone in the office, he said, ‘“We know what it 
means,—God pity them both!” 


CHAPTER XXI 


WO days later, just five days after Abe Patrick 

left the conference with Chaplain Jayne and 
Haig Brant to hurry back to his strike associates, the 
most remarkable and in some respects the most im- 
pressive and pathetic document ever issued by trade 
unionism arrived at the New York headquarters of the 
United World Movement. It was the formal, the of- 
ficial, statement of the proposition first brought in per- 
son by Abe Patrick to the director of the Industrial 
Bureau. Every admission of that stirring interview 
was incorporated, and in this direct language the ap- 
peal was voiced: 

“We feel that the workers can look to the Commis- 
sioners representing the United World Movement to 
safeguard and protect their interest; also we feel that 
no other institution combines all of the elements neces- 
sary to go into this very difficult situation. We are 
ready now to place ourselves and our cause in their 
keeping for such action and consideration as they will 
be able to secure. 

“In the event that these commissioners secure au- 
thorization to act as mediators for the adjustment of 
this controversy, we will induce the workers to return 
to work and to accept such programs as the commis- 
sioners may secure and recommend. 


“Finally, we do not ask nor expect the United World . 
218 ! 


THE FURNACE 219 


Movement to use our original demands as a basis of 
negotiation, but we specifically free them to start anew 
with whatever requirements they feel justice demands. 


“General Committee for Organizing Workers in Metals, 
(Signed) Ase Patrick, Chairman, 
SIDNEY JENSSEN, Secretary.” 


Immediately on receipt of the communication from 
Chairman Patrick, telegrams were dispatched to Doc- 
tor Justice and others of the commission, and within 
seventy-two hours a committee composed of the Doctor 
and two associates waited on the organization’s high- 
est officers. With this committee went Chaplain Jayne 
“to serve as a special convoy,’ as he expressed it. Let 
it be recorded that later the sanguine and optimistic 
chaplain was very glad that secretary Haig Brant was 
not in the group which filed into the now familiar com- 
pany offices. 

With scant attention to the ordinary amenities of 
such an occasion, the “Company” opened the confer- 
ence. ‘‘Gentlemen,” the spokesman said, “I have here a 
document that I wish to call your attention to.” The 
commissioners looked at each other in surprise. They 
were under the impression that they were in conference 
to consider the matter entrusted to them by the strike 
leaders, to discuss informally mediation. The grant- 
ing of their request for a hearing had left them unpre- 
pared when their hosts took the initiative. 

“We have here, or we did have until a few minutes 
ago,’ and a secretary was called to bring the now miss- 
ing papers, “‘very serious charges against certain of the 
agents employed by your commission; charges too that 


220 THE FURNACE 


raise vital questions as to the good faith in which you 
are prosecuting your activities.” 

“Pardon me.” It was the quiet voice of the chaplain 
that interrupted the speaker, and now the commission- 
ers registered fresh surprise, while their hosts fairly 
gasped in their amazement at the interrupter; but the 
chaplain, who had risen, continued without embarrass- 
ment, “I think that I can help you! Until you find 
yours, here is my copy of those charges,” and, drawing 
from a pocket his old service wallet, he placed in front 
of the now completely astonished company representa- 
tive the anonymous documents received from Gene 
Stanton. It would be very difficult to describe the im- 
pression made by the dramatic turn in the opening 
events of that interview. Doctor Justice and his asso- 
ciates were as startled at the chaplain’s strategy as was 
the company. But the representative of the employers 
accepted the papers extended to him and proceeded 
after the manner of a cross-examiner to interrogate his 
visitors. 

For an hour the momentous business of that occa- 
sion waited on the autocratic whim and will of steel. 
Extracts were read from the report; name by name and 
searchingly the visitors were questioned as to the truth 
of the charges. Thus a shameless creation of false- 
hood held the stage while the business that affected the 
lives of hundreds of thousands of children and women 
and men waited on the doorstep of industry’s ‘“abso- 
lutism.” 

The company representative stated firmly in answer 
to a question from Doctor Justice that he did not know 
the author of the charges. However, he dealt with 


THE FURNACE 221 


them as one who was familiar with their general 
method, and only with great reluctance did he turn 
from them to meet the request of the distinguished 
churchmen that a hearing be given the matter that had 
brought the commissioners to the corporation’s general 
offices. Then, immediately and persistently, the repre- 
sentatives of steel refused to hear any plan of media- 
tion. For Bruce Jayne, as for Doctor Justice and the 
other commissioners, the refusal was a heart-breaking 
disappointment, but from it there was no appeal. 

“This whole strike movement is a movement of Red 
radicals,’ again and again was insisted. Against all 
arguments the mighty organization was adamant. “Our 
positive word is a declination to arbitrate,’ was the in- 
variable answer, nor was the word “mediate” given a 
better reception. 

“As to these striking families you say are suffering, 
we feed the strikers. But as to these men you would 
represent, these men who have not gone back—we won't 
have them, they are nothing but Red radicals. Bear in 
mind that the very foundations of the American gov- 
ernment are involved in this matter!” 

Hours later Doctor Justice said, “And they spoke 
with hopeless sincerity. No man on earth could have 
convinced them that the corporation’s policy in this 
strike, in these closing stages of it, especially, is doing 
more to destroy the solidarity and divine hopefulness 
of the American democracy than a million ‘Red radi- 
cals’ could possibly do.” 

When the company spokesman was with difficulty re- 
minded of the publicly expressed favorable attitude to- 
ward collective bargaining, he said: 


222 THE FURNACE 


“We are heartily in favor of collective bargaining, 
provided it be through the right kind of an organiza- 
tion, but we are greatly disappointed at the Central 
Conference failure with its company union plan,—those 
men are still out and refuse to go back.” 

“But,” interjected one of the commissioners, “a very 
distinguished proponent of the Central plan insists 
that it suffers through no weakness of its own, but be- 
cause the rest of the organization, the great corpora- 
tion itself, has no plan—that the fact the Central 
men are out is proof of the failure of the industry’s 
policy in dealing with its men.” 

But the reply was the final word of the ill fated day, 
“Gentlemen, there is absolutely no issue.” 

Thus high hopes were dashed. Thus was locked ab- 
solutely, arbitrarily, a door that might have swung toa 
new era in the industrial life of America. 

Haig Brant was waiting for the commissioners when 
they came silently into the chaplain’s office. He asked 
no questions,—their faces spoke volumes that would 
never be written. A few minutes were spent in pre- 
paring a statement to be forwarded to Mr. Patrick, a 
statement closing an incident instead of opening an 
epoch. Also a letter was written to the company ask- 
ing for specific information in the cases referred to 
where the company had fed strikers,—a letter that 
couched again in the language of diplomacy and cour- 
tesy the desire of the investigating commission to find 
the truth and present the facts, but a letter, though de- 
livered by messenger, to which a reply never came. 

Nor was the commission ever able in all of its inten- 


THE FURNACE 223 


sive field operations to find one such case of company 
assistance. 

Bruce Jayne seemed crushed and aged as he made 
the first draft of the Bishop’s dictation. Silently Jayne 
and Brant went out together; silently they walked up 
the now crowded avenue,—it was five o’clock, the eve- 
ning hour when offices and high lofts pour their living 
streams through the streets and avenues, into the sur- 
face cars, the subways, and the “Ls.” Unmindful of 
the jostling multitudes, the two men pressed on. 

Suddenly, just off Madison Square, the major laid a 
restraining hand upon the chaplain’s arm. ‘‘Look,” he 
whispered, and following his gaze, Bruce saw upon an 
old brick wall an ancient sign. Upon its faded back- 
ground stood a pointing figure, and across the sky-line 
streamed in great letters still clear enough to send their 
challenge to the eyes these words, “I am for men.” 


It was less than a week after the “great refusal,” as 
the Major came to refer to the memorable conference 
with the officials of steel, that Chaplain Jayne received 
a stirring letter from Colonel Frank. It was the old 
leader of men who wrote,—the war man of San Mihiel 
And the Argonne: 

“T am near the end,” the communication began. 
“God knows I have done my utmost to meet this issue 
as an official of the company,—the whole company. 
God knows, too, what an agony my mind is these days 
as I sit and watch these stacks,—and the face of James 
Judson. ButIam near the end. Better face the break- 
ing of a bad compact, or a compact that has become un- 


224. THE FURNACE 


worthy, than consent to injustice and wrong, for, chap- 
lain, when I so consent, as I must if I remain, I em- 
brace dishonor and am damned. 

“T would give a limb to have an hour with you, but 
I dare not leave. I need the feel of your hand, the 
sound of your voice. Only a little longer, unless the 
heavens open, dare I wait. To know that you are 
standing ‘post’ with me these days and nights is my 
rock, for I am alone.” 

The face of a beautiful woman rose before Bruce 
Jayne as he read that last, and his eyes for a moment 
went blind. 

The letter had a postscript and contained an en- 
closure: 

“T have broken a perfectly good chair because of that 
undercover attack on you men. Thank you for the 
copy. Of all the miserable features of the whole rot- 
ten business, the spy system angers me most. I fear 
that it will send me to the violent ward yet. I have a 
sort of premonition that in the end it will somehow 
get me. Here is a clipping from Caxton, Ohio. ‘Red’ 
Poluskiani wasn’t the only man changed to a Judas.”’ 

The clipping referred to was the confession of Wil- 
liam J. George, treasurer of the Caxton Central Labor 
Union, a member of the Bricklayers’ Union, and a 
candidate for the City Council. The confession read 
in part: 

“On or about seven months ago I was approached 
by a man named Wallace who put a proposition up to 
me. . . . The duties were to send in reports of things 
that happen in the Bricklayers’ Union to the Con- 
tractors’ Service Corporation. . . . Salary connected 


THE FURNACE 228 


with this was $110 per month. . . . No checks were 
used, and the employees never visited the office as the 
company seldom used the same name any length of 
time. . . . Monthly allowance of expenses were from 
$10 to $15. . . . All employees were numbered as no 
names were used. My number was 201-A.” 

The confession was signed, “William J. George, 
Traitor.” 


CHAPTER XXII 


Oe be right up.’”’ The voice was Haig Brant’s, 

and as he spoke he slammed his receiver into the 
hook and started for the door. He had spoken in 
response to an urgent call from Bruce Jayne. 

“What is it?” he enquired anxiously, as two minutes 
later he rushed into the chaplain’s office on the floor 
above, “‘another document?” 

“No,” replied Jayne, “read this,” and he handed the 
major Malcolm Frank’s letter. There was silence in the 
room while Haig read. 

“Tough! Tough and terrible,—isn’t it!’ he ex- 
claimed, when he finished the postscript, “and no chance 
for him to find any relief,—for a long time. It seems 
a cowardly thing to leave the old boy—alone,”’ and 
eagerly the chaplain took up the cue. 

“Haig, we can’t leave him alone any longer—throw 
an extra collar into your bag and take the ‘Limited’ out 
to-night.” | 

“What!” fairly shouted the astonished major. ‘Me? 
—Read that letter, he wants you, a father confessor— 
you Protestant priest! He wants you, I say, not one 
of the fallen angels. What the—” but Bruce Jayne 
refused to smile. 

“Haig,” he continued, “he wants us; he happened to 
address that letter to me. Do you suppose that he had 
the slightest idea I would waste any time getting it on 


to you? You know how I’m fixed here,—that I can’t 
226 


THE FURNACE 227 


go—not to-night, and when a man gets an S.O.S. from 
a friend, he can’t wait until morning. Here’s the tele- 
gram I sent him just before I called you up,” and Brant 
read on the carbon handed to him: 

“Haig will see you in the morning.” Signed, 
“Bruce.” 

And so the major caught the “Limited” at eleven. 
In the long conference with the chaplain preceding his 
departure it had been agreed that Malcolm should be 
apprised of the “great refusal.’”’ There had been no 
publicity given to this interview, for in the minds of 
the commission it was regarded as confidential. When 
months later, through other channels, a distorted im- 
pression of it was given to the public, the matter dic- 
tated by Chairman Justice immediately after the con- 
ference in the corporation’s office was released. 

But that Malcolm Frank should have the complete 
story both the major and chaplain were fully per- 
suaded. Already he had an intimation of Abe Pat- 
rick’s visit to New York, and for days he had hoped 
against hope for some form of arbitration. In the 
Gethsemane where he now wrestled to a fateful de- 
cision, his friends knew that he needed, not cheap 
words of sympathy, but strong words of truth. 

The trip across the Alleghenies was not a restful one 
for Brant that night. As the train changed engines at 
Altoona, he was shaving, and a few minutes later he 
opened his portfolio and began the final reading of cer- 
tain portions of his report to the commissioners. Pres- 
ently another early riser hesitated at his section (his 
was the only one made up), and a voice that no man 
has ever yet described said: 


228 THE FURNACE 


“Pardon me, Major Brant, but may I bother you?” 

Looking up, the startled major found himself star- 
ing into the laughing eyes of a young woman. As he 
stammered to his feet she sat down and continued: 

“I am Gene Stanton.” 

“Gene Stanton!” the now thoroughly aroused man 
ejaculated, and he recalled vividly Malcolm Frank’s face 
that night in the old codperative restaurant as he had 
eagerly tried to locate his “angel” of the steel valleys. 

“Yes,” and the girl started,—almost apprehensively, 
it seemed to Brant. “Yes,” insistently now she said it. 
“Gene Stanton, and I imagine that we are not only 
going in the same general direction, but to the same 
general destination,’ and she laughed, now quite her 
confident self again, as the major, recovering his own 
self-possession, entered into the spirit of her informal 
greeting. 

“You must pardon me, major,” she continued, “for 
my undignified as well as informal introduction. But 
you see I knew you, and then there wasn’t another seat 
in the, car’ 

“Pardon you, Miss Stanton?” Brant replied. 
“Rather, congratulate me on my good fortune, while 
I congratulate one of the best friends that I have in 
the world on the return of spring to the dreariest, lone- 
liest town on earth.” 

And now the already radiant face in front of the 
major took on an added hue. The rich, full lips, half 
parted, the eyes, already luminous, became liquid, and 
with a candor that was exquisite, but as a shield for 
deeper things an exquisite failure, Gene Stanton re 
plied: 


THE FURNACE 229 


“Of course you speak of our mutual friend, Colonel 
Frank; a wonderful man he is. But it will take more 
than one flitting swallow to change the season just now 
in Oldsburg.” And suddenly the light seemed to go out 
in her eyes, and she became sober and listless. 

“Oh, what a desperately hard world it is,” she went 
on. “For weeks I have been trying to reconcile my 
conscience to the wishes of my people; to drive my 
mind by the mandates of my friends, and to satisfy my 
heart with the husks of society. But it just couldn’t 
be, and so I ran away,—again.” 

She turned from the window and with a half smile 
looked full into the eyes of the major. ‘With all the 
sadness I am rushing towards, I have a joy and eager- 
ness this morning that I have not known since I turned 
my back on the noises and passions and smoke of the 
steel valleys.” 

“No wonder Malcolm has been thinking about angels 
since she left,’’ Brant mused, as he watched the play 
of rich emotion upon the face of the beautiful woman, 
and then he discovered that he had been asked a 
question. 

‘“‘What is the end to be?” were the words that she re- 
peated. Then began a conversation that lasted until the 
brakes went down for the station, a conversation that 
gave Major Haig Brant a very convincing picture of 
Gene Stanton, a picture that revealed her as far more 
than a mere society slummer or casual settlement 
worker, and that left him fully persuaded that what- 
ever her family relationships might be (and he knew 
that Malcolm Frank believed her somehow connected 
with the powerful governing class in steel) she herself 


230 THE FURNACE 


was a friend, a friend in spite of environment, in spite 
of bitter opposition, perhaps,—a friend of the strike. 

As he hurried through the gate carrying the young 
woman’s traveling bag, he ran squarely into the ample 
front of Jasper Branson, who, having seen Miss Stan- 
ton and ignoring the “Exit” right of way, was block- 
ing the passage. 

“Why, my dear girl,” he was saying, “your telegram 
was a shock. Your father—” and then the collision 
occurred. Mutual apologies were made, but the presi- 
dent of the Bancroft Steel Company lost no time in 
breaking up the informal party, and the gray limousine 
whisked Gene Stanton away, while the major waited 
for the next local to Oldsburg. 

Malcolm was at the station when Haig swung from 
the platform, Pale and gaunt he was, but with the 
eternal fitness that distinguished him for pel uee 
super-endurance in the service. 

“Man! but it is good to get my eyes on you,” Mal- 
colm said, as the two men came to grips. 

“Well,” countered the irrepressible major, “the 
preacher couldn’t come so they sent the undertaker. 
When do we eat?” 

Straight to the Judson home they drove, and an hour 
they spent over their breakfast before they repaired to 
the quiet and comfort of the library. The superin- 
tendent was gone when they arrived, so that they were 
quite alone in the great house. 

As both Bruce and Haig had known it would be, the 
story of the refusal of the company was a disappoint- 
ment, a heart-breaking disappointment to Malcolm. 
For him it was the end of the trail. Where he had 


THE FURNACE ake 


hoped to find a rising way leading out of the valley of 
hate and death, he found only a sheer granite mountain 
of brutal denial. Like a man wounded unto death he 
sat. Haig Brant concluded his long and comprehensive 
statement with, “And so you see, Malcolm, this great 
structure of steel’s benevolence,—these houses and 
playgrounds and pensions and safety devices,—is not an 
honest house, but a trap,—a trap baited with benefac- 
tions, a bribe, or Atalanta’s golden apple.” 

For a long interval after Haig concluded the two 
men sat in silence, and it was then that the major 
wished for the chaplain. The colonel it was who 
spoke first: 

“Haig, do you remember,” he said, as a man who 
has returned from a far country of thought, “do you 
remember what you said that last night on the Aqui- 
tania, after I stood in my pride and read Branson’s 
letter? Do you remember? Well, Ido. I suppose that 
I remember so well because I have tried so hard to for- 
get. This is what you said: 

““Branson promises one thing and you accept an- 
other. There will be a crash some day, and you and 
he will fall on opposite sides of the heap.’ ” 

“Go on,” said Brant, “go on,” but the colonel had 
finished, and so the major concluded, “ “You are not 
your own, and steel can’t buy you.’ That is what I 
remember.” And again there was an end of speaking, 
while one man sat amid the tumbled ruins of his shin- 
ing walls, and another stood by through the travail 
hour of his friend. 

Not until mid-afternoon did Malcolm go to the office, 
and then only to seek a brief conference with James 


232 THE FURNACE 


Judson. The superintendent had been waiting for 
him, and the anxiety that of late seemed to blend the 
strong lines of his face into a mask of habitual grief 
was like a blow to the young first assistant as he began 
what he believed would be an interview of disappoint- 
ment and sorrow with the man who was infinitely more 
than his chief. | 

Briefly he told the story that he had heard from the 
lips of Major Brant. “I have the major’s permission 
to tell you,” he said, and the white-haired man bowed 
in acknowledgment of the confidence. “God knows, 
only God knows,” continued Malcolm, “what it costs 
me to say what now I must say,’ and his voice broke. 
“But God knows that to longer remain silent would 
mean to lose my soul. 

“This is the end, Superintendent. I resign,—but, 
James Judson, as God hears me now and will judge me 
later, I do not leave you. ‘Till death and beyond I 
stand on the compact. The Corporation has left us. 
Now I know it. Too long I have been blind. To-night 
I will wire my resignation to President Branson, and to- 
morrow I go out with the strike.”’ 

Not a word, beyond that of recognition, had James 
Judson spoken since Malcolm came into the office. 
Scarcely had he seemed to breathe as his first assistant 
talked on, and now when the younger man’s voice, as 
it concluded, became so intense and vibrant that the very 
air of the room seemed to become charged he only 
turned to the great window that looked out upon the 
mills. | 
It was the turn of the shift. To any but an ex- 
perienced eye the throngs entering and departing were 


THE FURNACE 233 


as large and as orderly as those of the pre-strike period, 
and even the strike leaders were nearly ready to confess 
that their fight was lost. 

When at last the superintendent turned back to his 
friend, there was a strange gray smile upon his face, 
and Malcolm remembered the expression that had 
played there on that memorable morning of the en- 
counter with Pete Brudidge. 

“You are late to-day, Malcolm,” Mr. Judson began, 
as though the younger man had not spoken. “But let’s 
call it a day and go home. By the way, your stenog- 
rapher is out,—I excused her,—didn’t think you would 
care to use her with the major here. President Bran- 
son will be in at nine,—nine in the morning, for a con- 
ference. I arranged it for you,’ and then he added, 
even more quietly, “For us.” 

Half in a daze Malcolm accompanied his chief to the 
car and together they drove home. Brant had been 
resting and reading; not once had he opened his port- 
folio. “Worn to the bone,” as he expressed it, he had 
taken the interval between his friend’s departure and 
return for complete relaxation. There was no strike 
talk at the table. The superintendent seemed to Mal- 
colm more like himself than for weeks. 

Following the meal, the host suggested billiards, and 
for an hour the three men gave themselves over to the 
spell of the ivories. Then Mr. Judson said: 

“Pardon me, but this has been an unusual day, and 
to-morrow promises to be much like it. Unless you re- 
fuse to release me,” and he laughed, “I'll retire. Better 
not follow me at too great a distance,” and he cast a 
fatherly glance at Malcolm,—a glance that had become 


wad 


234 THE FURNACE 


with him a habit, an instinct, and again the first assist- 
ant’s memory was busy. He recalled how his friend 
had gone upstairs to take a bath practically in the 
midst of a previous conference that was to them both 
an hour of destiny. He was amazed with himself that 
he should feel no surprise at this abrupt ending of 
the day. No chance would there be in the morning for 

a personal interview before that fateful meeting with 
Jasper Branson. What did it mean? But even as his 
mind tried to raise the question, his heart refused, and 
he felt in his soul an assurance that left him calm and 
comforted. Somehow he knew that whatever hap- 
pened on the morrow, James Judson would understand. 

The two younger men were not far behind their 
host. Nothing was said until both were under cover 
and the lights were out. Then Brant remarked casu- 
ally : 

“Malcolm, I saw an angel to-day,—yea, more. Oh, 
my friend, I beheld a heavenly host!” 

_ The breathing in the other twin bed stopped, and the 
major felt the compulsion of that electric silence as 
surely as he would have felt the impact of a bayonet 
thrust. Like a man who comes to attention under a 
peremptory order, he answered the unspoken command 
of his friend. 

“Gene Stanton came in on the ‘Limited’ this morn-- 
ing and will be in Oldsburg to-morrow. Good-night!”’ 


CHAPTER XXIII 


HE morning came at last, cold and dark, black 
with the smoke which banked against the hills 
standing like prison walls about the old mill town. 
Three quiet men sat together at an early breakfast, and 
later two of them drove down from the hill to the sooty 
offices of the great mill. As Haig and Malcolm stood 
for a moment by the car while the superintendent lin- 
gered conveniently behind, the former said: 

“This morning takes me back to the Argonne. I 
wish that I could ‘go over’ with you, but remember I’m 
here in reserve, and reénforcements are coming. Read 
this.” 

Malcolm took the telegram which Haig had received 
only a few minutes before and read: 

“Coming to city for final meeting with local com- 
mittee on strike hearings. Meet me at Hotel Stratford 
noon. Best to Frank.” Signed, “Jayne.” 

As Malcolm looked up, and with a new light in his 
eyes returned the message, Haig concluded, ‘The God 
Jayne talks to didn’t get you out of that over there to 
let you fail in this,—over here.” 

James Judson made no effort to engage his associate 
in conversation during the drive to the office; indeed, 
his very attitude discouraged conversation. And so 
they came to their desks without a word having passed 
between them on the anticipated portentous events of 
the day. 


236 THE FURNACE 


Within a few minutes after their arrival Jasper 
Branson was announced, and with him came Peter 
Brudidge. The sinister face of the latter was just the 
tonic that the first assistant of the Oldsburg mills 
needed to fit him for the ordeal at hand. 

It was the visitor who opened the conversation. 
There was no mistaking the light in his eye,—it was 
the familiar battle eye before which men of the in- 
dustry, high and low, were wont to quail that he turned 
now upon James Judson. 

“Judson,” he snapped, “only your years and your 
service and our long association brought me here to- 
day. Your call was rather unusual, I should say, under 
the circumstances. Perhaps peremptory is the word,” 
and he paused ominously, as though waiting for James 
Judson to speak, but James Judson made no sign, and 
with an added jump to his words the president went on, 
“Let’s finish it,—whatever it is,—let’s finish it quick!” 
and the superintendent replied: 

“President Branson, Colonel Frank has something to 
say to you, and I am sure that he will not detain you 
long.” 

In a half fury of surprise Branson swung about 
and leaped to his feet. “What!” he cried. “You bring 
me here to talk to your assistant? [Il be—’ but James 
Judson was on Mis feet now, and as the gray men faced 
each other, there was nothing needed by either to match 
them well. As a finished boxer picks his opponent’s 
blows out of the air, the superintendent snapped up the 
president’s words and retorted: 

“You will be favored by both of us, sir, and the 
Colonel speaks first.” 


THE FURNACE 237 


Malcolm Frank had been so completely amazed by 
the way in which the conference opened and at the im- 
mediate clash between the two high officials that he sat 
as though bound in his chair, while Brudidge, appar- 
ently a victim of the same surprise, watched the pre- 
liminary skirmish with open-mouthed astonishment. 
But that last sentence of James Judson’s was a bugle 
to his associate, and as a man leaps from the stu- 
por of sleep at the call of some tocsin, Malcolm re- 
sponded. 

“President Branson,’ he said quietly, even as the 
superintendent’s last word left his lips, “J resign to 
go on strike.” 

Then it was that for the second time that week the 
president of the Bancroft Steel Company felt the rush 
of blood to his head, the swelling in his throat, and the 
singing as of bullets in his ears. He reeled and would 
have fallen had the superintendent not assisted him to 
his chair. But in a moment the seizure passed and 
left him with a new and unfamiliar calm. Breathing 
heavily for a few minutes, he seemed to be collecting 
his faculties, marshaling his powers. Then brushing 
courteously aside the second glass of water offered by 
his old associate, and refusing absolutely to allow a 
call for a physician, he said very quietly: 

“Colonel, the Bancroft Steel Company never goes to 
its knees for any man, and we don’t treat with unions, 
but we do give our employees a square deal and a chance 
to speak. Tell your story.” 

And so out of the battle storm with which the con- 
ference opened came unexpectedly an unnatural calm 
in which Malcolm Frank uncovered his soul. Swiftly, 


238 THE FURNACE 


with the sure and powerful passion of seasoned re- 
straint, he told his story: 

“T came to this office,” said he, “‘and to this company, 
with the physical and soul scars of a war in which ten 
million men died to give the living a chance to make a 
new world. I came, sir, with your generous invita- 
tion making me glad,—an invitation that through no 
fault of yours I did not understand. To this hour I 
have given my best to the Bancroft Steel Company, 
but with growing misgivings. I have heard the cry 
of the men and the deeper cry of the women and chil- 
dren. I have waited for the answer of the corporation. 
I have refused to accept the shame of the spy, the black- 
mail of the parasite, the murder of the thug, the long 
hours, the unequitable wage adjustment, and the denial 
of conference as that answer. I have blackened my 
conscience and walked away from my kind, while I 
commanded my soul to wait on the will of the powers 
in steel. Newspapers have denied a voice to the work- 
ers’ grievances, and I have waited; civil liberties have 
gone to the discard, and I have waited; my truest 
friends, the men with whom I watched death come 
across the fields of France, have been maligned, and I 
have waited. But now, when at last with these strikers, 
who never had a fighting chance, crushed and helpless, 
steel denies the upward eye and turns its thumb down,— 
I wait no longer.” 

Still President Branson was silent—was it the elo- 
quence, the leashed fury of the speaker? was it the 
inner warning he had just received? or was it a hand 
that reached up to him from the pit where he began 


THE FURNACE 239 


and turned him to old memories? But still he waited, 
and Malcolm spoke on: 

“You say that these things which are just, the things 
we concede as just, cannot be done; that the wage ad- 
justments cannot now be made; that to adopt the eight- | 
hour day is impossible because of new problems so 
revolutionary a change would create. But, sir, I say 
that any industry in which human life is staked against 
profit and which arrogates to itself arbitrary power 
has no moral alternative as to whether it can pay a liv- 
ing wage; as to whether it can change to the eight-hour 
day or adopt any other program to which it consents 
in principle. Jt must! It must, or die. If steel arro- 
gates to itself the prerogative of industrial absolutism 
then, sir, it must accept the responsibility of that ab- 
solutism,—unconditionally accept. ‘“Can’t’ is not an 
excuse, is not an answer, but an indictment. President 
Branson, this is the ultimatum of law, and against law, 
though laws and courts and public opinion be laggard, 

not even steel can stand.” 

Still Jasper Branson remained silent while the vocal 
soul of Malcolm Frank continued, “The tragedy in steel 
to-day and the crux of this crisis 1s not that the com- 
pany refuses to deal with union leaders, is not that 
the corporation denies the plan of the strikers; the 
tragedy is that steel has no plan, and, God pity us all, 
turns her back upon mediation.”’ 

And now Frank had reached the conclusion of the 
whole matter; his countenance, which had until now 
burned with a Jovian flame, became dull, and his tone 
the cry of a penitent. “Until this morning I have 


240 THE FURNACE 


walked in the paths of this colossal sin, What all the 
world could see, what you, sir, tried to tell me, I refused 
to believe. I saw only a cleavage between two parts of 
an absolute whole, and I strove, sanguine as a child of 
the Santa Claus myth, to heal the breach. But the 
cleavage was a chasm, and the parts were two hemi- 
spheres of everlasting difference. President Branson, 
this strike is not an industrial conflict; it is the eternal 
struggle; it is man battling upward. It is dollars and 
dolomite and slag and scrap against the immortal soul, 
and, Mr Branson, so help me God, I am for men.” 

For a minute that was an emotional age, silence took 
command of the room, and then Peter Brudidge spoke. 
Fiercely he spoke, resentful of the mastery of his hated 
rival Challengingly he spoke, as though to drag the 
young Finn down from a great height to wallow in 
the mire of a petty wrangle. 

“President Branson, I tried to prepare you for this; 
he didn’t make that speech for the first time to-day.” 

But no man seemed to hear him. Jasper Branson 
turned inquiringly, almost appealingly, to James Jud- 
son and then back to the first assistant. Moistening his 
lips with his tongue, he said, in a voice so changed from 
the former robustness of his speech that three men 
started, ‘Colonel Frank, do you realize that the strike 
is over, that we have won?” 

There was no mastery in the man with which to meet 
the mood of the younger, and in utter futility of words 
he spoke as from an outgrown manual. Malcolm 
Frank replied: 

“Yes, this strike is over. But this strike is an inci- 
dent ; the real strike has just begun.” 


THE FURNACE 241 


With apparent difficulty the president squared him- 
self in his chair, and as though dismissing a hopeless 
situation spoke to the superintendent. With a trace 
of the old brusqueness in his voice he said, “Well, Jud- 
son, I will leave Mr. Brudidge here. You will need a 
strong man as first assistant now.” And many mean- 
ings might have been attached to his words. 

But quickly they were forgotten, for the superin- 
tendent of the Oldsburg mills arose and with an ashen 
face and lips that were bloodless replied, “Branson, 
you must leave him as superintendent, for I go out with 
the colonel.” 

Already that day the depths had been sounded. AI- 
ready the minds of three men had been so churned by 
intense, conflicting passions that they were incapable of 
further violent reactions. ‘There was an emotional 
numbness upon them. Jasper Branson arose, turned 
mechanically to Peter Brudidge, and said, as in utter 
weariness, “Report here at nine in the morning to look 
after things until permanent arrangements are made. 
You may go now.” 

As Brudidge strode exultantly from the room, Bran- 
son walked unsteadily over to his old superintendent. 
“Jim,” he said, and his voice broke, “we are old men; 
a hundred years old I feel to-day. I begin to think that 
I’m nearly done, Jim,” and his right hand sought the 
other’s shoulder. “You remember the day that we came 
into the mill together. Now you are going out. Forty 
years isn’t long, but the end is lonely. You seemed 
more fortunate than I. Kate left you the boy. I had 
only a grave. Then the war evened us up,” and at 
thought of the war he stopped and became conscious 


242 . THE FURNACE 


again of his surroundings—the occasion, and the young 
giant who sat spellbound in the chair of the first assist- 
ant. But his mood was too deep to be shaken off, and 
he went on, “Jim, good-by—and God bless you!’ and 
from the sight which followed that Malcolm Frank 
turned his eyes away. | 
Presently he heard shuffling feet, the shuffling feet of 
a man, of an old man, turning toward the door,—the 
feet of a man who as master was part of an evil system 
which mastered him along with the men it enslaved. 
Then, after an interval, James Judson’s voice, muffled 
and anguished, said, “Malcolm,—Malcolm, meet me 
at home when you have done what you think is best.” 


GUA Dri OX LV) 


ND so Malcolm Frank was left alone, alone in the 
office out of which he would presently go for the 
last time. For fully an hour he steadied himself and 
prepared for the next step, as he went through his per- 
sonal files and arranged the details of his leaving. 
Later he learned that for weeks James Judson had been 
preparing for what he had long since come to regard 
as inevitable. 

On first thought he was inclined to telephone the 
Stratford and attempt to reach Jayne and Brant, but 
later decided not to do so. He found himself wonder- 
ing what President Branson would do; whether he 
would anticipate a possible publicity statement from 
Oldsburg by issuing a colored announcement from the 
general offices. Malcolm knew that the resignation 
of the two Oldsburg superintendents, while bound to be 
a spectacular and startling event, could in no way in- 
fluence the termination of the strike itself, but with a 
growing eagerness he sought for some plan by which 
to capitalize the matter for the cause of the men, the 
cause of industrial freedom itself. 

Later he found that not even to his closest friends 
had Jasper Branson told of his conference in Oldsburg, 
and that when Peter Brudidge had practically demanded 
the issuing of a statement to the press that unsavory 
individual had been peremptorily ordered from the 
room. ‘The first the general public knew of James 

243 


244 THE FURNACE 


Judson’s resignation from the high position he had 
held for so many years, and of Colonel Frank’s with- 
drawal from the institution in which his advancement 
had been so rapid, was when the morning papers of 
the next day, forced from their silence by the irre- 
sistible tide of events, told the story of the most re- 
markable strike meeting ever held in those valleys or, 
for that matter, anywhere else in the country. A story 
it was that swept the continent as no publicity event 
since the war; a story that when told left men thought- 
ful and questioning, nor would it be forgotten when the 
mighty mills again ran “full-handed” and the proud in- 
dustry entered the strike as a closed incident upon its 
records. 

Before leaving his old desk Frank called the local 
strike headquarters and very shortly thereafter the 
leaders were on their way to the home of James Judson. 
“Not here,’ Malcolm had said to himself, as he closed 
his door, “it is war now and this is company ground. 
We will meet these men on our own territory.” And 
so in the old library the strange group assembled. The 
conference was brief, but eventful. The strikers were 
at first stunned by the announcement with which they 
were received, and then wildly excited by it. They had 
hoped for some offer of conciliation when they re- 
sponded to the summons, and one that perhaps would 
enable them to save a fragment of their self-respect. 
To be told that “the company,’—for in this light they 
regarded Judson and Frank,—had joined the strike, 
drove them into a frenzy and left them with wild hopes 
utterly impossible of realization. 


THE FURNACE 245 


But out of the conference which came gradually 
under the control of the two greater leaders grew a 
plan that promised to the workers at least a nation-wide 
voice of protest. It was agreed that a meeting, a public 
meeting, should be held that night; that it should be 
held in the home of James Judson, and that the strike 
leaders from the general headquarters should be in- 
vited to speak along with both of the former superin- 
tendents. 

“Tf we overflow the house, we will go outside,” Mr. 
Judson had said, and now that he had made his com- 
mitment, a commitment that as he saw it then would 
send him out as an industrial Ishmaelite among men, he 
was quietly, but nevertheless eagerly, determined to 
make the blow of his resignation fall in such a way 
as to count most heavily for the cause he had espoused. 

But while it could have been foreseen that the Jud- 
son house would be too small to entertain the meeting, 
not even the most sanguine would have suggested a 
crowd that overflowed the porches and filled the lawns 
until literally thousands of people, men and women and 
children, babbling in a score of languages, tried to press 
close enough to the great front entrance to hear the 
voices of the speakers. Such a throng had never before 
been gathered together in those valleys. The long pent- 
up emotions of the suppressed multitude took advantage 
of this first opportunity to send the feet of the people 
to the place of public assemblage. By the word of 
mouth which in massed communities and under the 
stimulus of some common thought seems to travel with 
the speed of light, the announcement went down the 


246 THE FURNACE 


deep gulches and over the black hills until the farthest 
village of the mighty industrial district had heard the 
word and turned its delegation toward Oldsburg. 

While the place of the meeting gave both James 
Judson and his younger associate complete confidence 
that the speakers would not be interfered with, there 
was no desire to even seem to play a sharp game with 
the authorities, and so in a special trip to the head- 
quarters of the constabulary, the colonel asked for the 
presence of officers and tried to convince them of the 
exact nature of the assemblage. They were hardly to 
be censured, however, for failing or refusing to under- 
stand so preposterous an announcement. Two troopers 
were assigned to the meeting,—one of them Sergeant 
Johnson, and first in the entrance hall and then on the 
porch, where they shivered behind their greatcoats, the 
reporters of the city dailies awaited the events they had 
been hurriedly ordered to cover. 

But between the setting of the stage for the drama 
and the gathering of the audience, there elapsed several 
hours, which to the principals were crowded ones. Al- 
most immediately after Mr. Judson and Malcolm 
reached their rooms, on returning from the call on the 
local authorities, they were summoned downstairs for 
a conference with Chairman Patrick and Secretary 
Jenssen of the General Strike Committee. 

Both of the visitors were manifestly ill at ease, and 
particularly was this true of Patrick. “Never before in 
my life,’ remarked Mr. Judson later, “was I so im- 
pressed with the injustice of what we of the company 
have been pleased to call our ‘man-to-man’ policy. 
Those men, even with the known changed relationship, 


THE FURNACE 247 


didn’t have an equal chance with us on our own ground 
in my home. What a fool I have been to think that the 
poor devils in the mill were getting a square deal. Why 
they couldn’t stand up and tell their story to a foreman 
even if they should find the foreman inclined to hear 
them. You can’t give the company all the handicaps 
of tradition, training, intelligence, and power, lay the 
course forever in company environment, and then ex- 
pect the ‘hunky’ to have a fair chance at the winner’s 
end of the purse. And,” concluded Mr. Judson, ‘‘when 
even a ‘hunky’ doesn’t get a fair chance in America, 
this country is going back on the word of the fathers.” 

Instinctively the two strike leaders looked now to 
James Judson and Malcolm Frank for leadership, 
waited on their suggestions. The evening program 
as finally outlined was as follows: Abe Patrick pre- 
siding; a statement of "the strike situation by Sidney 
Jenssen, followed by a brief address from James Jud- 
son, and closing remarks by Colonel Frank. 

It was five o’clock before the two visitors left,—less 
than two hours remained before the crowd would begin 
to gather, but whatever may have been the thoughts of 
James Judson, those of his young associate were not 
with the impending events of the night. 

All through the day he had surged blindly ahead, fol- 
lowing the path of duty, heeding the voice of the first 
and then each succeeding obligation, but restless to be 
about other business, impatient and eager to take up the 
trail of another quest,—the quest of his heart’s de- 
sire. Even before he left for the office that morning 
he had called Gene Stanton’s old lodgings only to find 
that she had not yet left the care of Jasper Branson, 


248 THE FURNACE 


who resided with his two widowed sisters. He had had 
to be content with leaving his number, but had asked 
that the call be marked urgent. 

And now, all through the day, even in the most in- 
tense moments of it, he had kept one ear, as it “were, 
locked against all save her call. But she had not called. 
Twice, between five and six, he rang the Y.W.C.A. 
again, but each time the answer was, “No, Miss Stan- 
ton has not arrived, and there is no word.” 

Finally he had become rash in his impatience and had 
rung President Branson’s home, but to no comforting 
effect. Miss Stanton was not in, had not been in since 
noon, would not be back that day, and had left no 
address beyond saying that she expected to make her 
headquarters indefinitely at the Y.W.C.A. in Olds- 
burg. 

Malcolm had also tried with no better success to 
reach Jayne and Brant at the Stratford. Both were 
out. Finally he wired the major. It seemed that he 
was doomed to disappointment in every direction; that 
on the night of all nights when he most needed the sup- 
port and encouragement of his friends, he was sen- 
tenced to go forward alone. 

But while seated with Mr. Judson at the supper table, 
the first rift appeared in the encircling clouds. Brant 
called up and said, “Just got your message about the 
meeting to-night. I have been busy helping Jayne clean 
up details. He just naturally ordered me out of the 
conference, having some sort of a premonition you 
might need one of us. Then I found your wire here 
at the room. I feel like a traitor to leave him, but I’d 
have the same feeling about you if I stayed, and besides 


THE FURNACE 249 


I’m strong for discipline, and he is my superior! He 
will be out early in the morning; but, man! if he knew 
of the meeting, not even stern duty could hold him here 
to-night ! 

“And, say! Gene Stanton will be with me. She 
rang the hotel just now from some town up the river, 
just before I called you, and said that the people there 
had word of a meeting, a strike meeting, to be addressed 
by James Judson and yourself. She had tried twice 
to reach you by ’phone, but always the line was busy.” 
(Malcolm bit his lips as he remembered how cease- 
lessly he had hung on that wire!) “She had been com- 
pelled to change her original plan, and would not have 
reached Oldsburg until to-morrow evening; but when 
she finally got hold of me here, she changed her plan 
again. Now she’s coming to-night,—will meet me at 
the hotel. As soon as she arrives we'll be off. 

“And, say! old man, I think that if Jayne were here 
he would want me to say, You are not your own,— 
you should worry!” 

Up went the receiver with a bang, and like a man 
who had come out of darkness into a great light, Mal- 
colm returned to James Judson, “Friend,” he said, 
“the major is coming out for our début, and he is bring- 
ing Gene Stanton!” 

The announcement of the return to the strike district 
of that young woman was not only a surprise to Mr. 
Judson, but as Malcolm watched his face he saw it reg- 
ister apprehension, fear, regret. “I’m sorry, lad,’’—the 
older man called the younger by that name for the first 
time,—‘“‘I’m sorry, terribly sorry,” he said. “Do you 
remember what I told you once before,—a long time 


250 THE FURNACE 


ago?” and Malcolm nodded. ‘More I cannot say even 
now,” James Judson continued, “but as I would spare 
you pain and tragic regret, I warn you again.” 

“You speak like an evil genius, Superintendent,” re- 
plied Malcolm with only a half jest in his tone, “TI ask 
for no quarter, but some things are written in the stars, 
and for that matter, all of us are on the knees of the 
gods. Don’t worry. I take my medicine, bitter and 
sweet. I'll drink my cup whether to life or to death, 
God helping me, like a man. But, by the Eternal, I’m 
glad she is coming!’ and with the eagerness of a boy, © 
he rushed off to put the finishing touches on his per- 
sonal plans. 

At seven-thirty that night, when Strike Chairman 
Abe Patrick called the meeting to order, and in a brief 
statement announced the purpose of the gathering, he 
made the first public statement of the resignation of 
James Judson and Malcolm Frank as company officials, . 
and of their espousal of the cause of the strikers. A 
vast and motley crowd that practically filled the spacious 
grounds of the former superintendent raised such a 
shout that Sergeant Johnson and his fellow trooper 
turned apprehensively to the Colonel. Frank’s smile 
was reassurance enough for his old army associate who 
grinned rather sheepishly and swung his eyes again out 
over the jabbering, gesticulating, evil-smelling throng 
of men, women and children. 

Sidney Jenssen was heard with enthusiasm, but also 
with a growing inclination to impatience,—the crowd 
had come to hear Judson and Frank. As the strike 
secretary finished his comprehensive statement of the 
difficulties the cause of the workers had faced, the in- 


THE FURNACE 251 


superable obstacles placed in the way of success,— 
for he did not attempt to raise false hopes, nor did he 
dodge the issue of impending failure,—Malcolm Frank, 
whose eyes roved restlessly, ceaselessly, over the 
audience before him, heard the siren of a taxi just 
turning back from the entrance to the grounds, now 
blocked by people, and, presently, far down the drive 
he caught the signal of a woman’s upflung hand. 

Haig Brant walked beside Gene Stanton, but even he 
no longer mattered, and was unnoticed. As in a flash 
of light, the multitude disappeared, and the audience 
dwindled to one, but for Malcolm that one filled the 
universe. The girl stopped in a bit of an opening made 
for her by the people who knew and loved her, just 
where the old dead rose-garden skirted the drive. 
Against the trunk of a great elm she leaned with her 
furs drawn closely about her, and the flickering light 
of a gasoline torch throwing mottling shadows like a 
coarse veil over her face. 

Malcolm felt himself lifted on the wings of the inner- 
most mysteries of his being as he feasted his eyes upon 
her. Now he knew; dear God—how he felt it!—the 
emptiness of life without her. Only the thunder of 
many-tongued cheers greeting James Judson awoke him 
and even then he heard the words of his friend as words 
spoken in a whisper far away. Well it is for the rest of 
us that reporters were present to take down the speeches, 
and Haig Brant to stow away in his unfailing memory 
the impressions of that unprecedented occasion. 

“Friends,” began the gray superintendent, “I stand 
before you a living though a broken example of the 
failure of steel to find a way to meet its men. Upon this 


2n2 THE FURNACE 


hill I have had my home for thirty years, and in the 
valley I have gone to work for forty. You have been 
kind enough to remember me at Christmas with gifts 
that often carried on their wrappers in your own lan- 
guages the name “Fair boss,” and that, as I see it now, 
was my pay. 

“I came into power among you after the bloody riots 
of the other great strike. I heard the guns of that war, 
and saw its dead. It was then that I promised my God 
to give men, all men, nothing short of a square deal, 
and as God is my judge, and you are here to witness, 
I have tried to keep my vow.” Like a vote of confi- 
dence rang up the unanimous shout, “You have!” but 
the speaker’s voice continued: 

“To-night I stand before you a living, broken monu- 
ment of failure. Noman can speak for another against 
the other’s will, and no act of generosity, no gift of 
benevolence, can take the place of freedom and justice. 
Rather would I be free, to fail, than, bound, to succeed. 
And, men, what I claim for myself is your right. It is 
to this that I give my life now. I am on strike with 
you, on strike not against steel, but for the right of 
the humblest among us to talk and to work like a man.” 

Very quietly James Judson had spoken, so quietly 
that although the crowd had been breathlessly still, 
much of his brief address had been heard only by the 
hundreds immediately about the improvised platform. 
But as he concluded, he lifted his voice, and his final 
sentence carried to the edge of the throng. Now the 
many voices became one, and a cheer of pent passion 
rose from that residential hill that sent hundreds below 
in anxiety to their windows. 


THE FURNACE 253 


_ But it was for Malcolm Frank that the hapless people 
had come. It was to hear him that the multitude had 
waited; and now he was standing before them. Im- 
pressively he stood through their cheers; cheers that 
swept the old slate clean of their doubts and their 
disappointments; cheers that rose a mighty vocal tide 
to flood away the revilements they had spoken against 
him when it seemed that he had been ashamed of his 
people in their hour of need and had broken with his 
kind. 

When at last quiet came upon the place and even as 
Malcolm was slowly dropping to his side the hand he 
had long held extended in mute appeal for silence, an- 
other interruption, and an intérruption of another sort 
unexpectedly appeared. Out of a swirl of figures—men 
and women with children, who were charged from the 
rear, taken suddenly unawares—came a score of armed 
men. Over the veranda rail they leaped into the full 
light of the great entrance,—Peter Brudidge and his 
mill guards. Ignoring the officers of the meeting, 
Brudidge turned on the crowd. “Get to —— out of 
here!’ he roared and, swinging his automatic, called 
to the guards, who in the face of that vast throng in- 
stinctively drew back. 

Taken completely by surprise, the people were as 
hypnotized—fear, amazement and, above all, doubt, 
were blended in their faces. It was Malcolm Frank 
who acted first. As the automatic of Peter Brudidge 
swung for the second time wildly about the “Black 
Killer’s” head, the young giant’s right arm shot out, 
and with the impact of a trip-hammer his fist landed 
just below the hand that held the weapon. Back into 





254 THE FURNACE 


the entrance, high above the heads of the men on the 
platform, the gun flew. With a howl of rage Brudidge 
leaped for his enemy. 

But even as he leaped and as the guards who had 
been loath to obey his first command sprang forward to 
assist him, Sergeant Johnson struck him fair on the 
head with a club that never before had been used upon 
a company official. Half stunned, he toppled against 
the speaker’s table; swaying there he glared ludicrously 
about as he struggled to regain his senses. 

“What in I say!’ Johnson demanded angrily 
of the armed men about him, and they, in the presence 
of the tunexpected uniforms of the constabulary, 
cowered in silence. It had all happened in a second 
of time,—the charge, the revilement, the assault, the 
collapse. 

But the crowd out in front was beginning to find it- 
self. Men became conscious of the screams of women 
and children who had been brutally handled in that first 
rush of Brudidge and his guards. A roar as of beasts 
who have come upon their wounded young rose from 
the throats of the mob, and it surged toward the plat- 
form in a jam that would have ended in tragedy. 

Then Malcolm Frank took command. Like some 
god of battle he leaped on the neck of the great marble 
lion that lay as though guarding the right of the 
entrance. Reaching down to a grimy faced boy who 
had wriggled close to the porch and who was sinking 
beneath the weight of the frenzied multitude, he lifted 
him—lifted and held him high above the heads of the 
people. 

“Stand fast!’ he cried, “stand fast! for the love of 





THE FURNACE 255 


God, stand fast!” and like soldiers who halt on com- 
mand the mob stopped dead in its tracks. 

Now fully recovered from the blow of the sergeant, 
Brudidge watched the scene before him with fierce 
apprehensions. Like a fool he had blundered into a 
fresh humiliation if not into the end of his career, for 
there was no mistaking the temper of that mob. With 
a curse he acknowledged it,—Malcolm Frank and Mal- 
colm Frank alone stood between him and death. He 
had heard of the meeting, and asking for no details had 
embraced with avidity what he hastily concluded was 
an opportunity to humiliate both Judson and Frank, 
while he inaugurated his administration with a show 
of power that would put terror into the minds of the 
strikers. 

Now he was trapped. Over him stood the trooper, 
ready to repeat that first dose of the club. Behind 
him, crowding into the protecting hall, were his thor- 
oughly terrified companions, while in front of him the 
man he hated kept ten thousand clawlike hands from 
reaching for his throat. 

Only an instant did Malcolm Frank awe the multi- 
tude with the uplifted boy. Then as he swung him to 
safety behind him and before the hypnotic spell had 
been broken, he cried, in a voice that rang far out upon 
the night, a voice that to a white-faced woman, safely 
sheltered in front of a great elm that had protected 
her from that first mad rush which had carried her 
escort away, was as the sound of mighty, healing 
waters: 

“If you love your women and kids, don’t move!”’ and 
there, like frozen images with life in them, but fixed 


256 THE FURNACE 


under his eye, they stood until he released them. Now 
he spoke, and so gripped by the man and the message 
was that multitude that no one seemed to notice when 
Brudidge withdrew. Piloted by James Judson, he went 
to the rear of the house and out through the old stable 
yard he passed with his men. The superintendent’s 
only comment as he left the shaken wretch was: 

“You made a bad mistake, Brudidge,—nine o’clock 
in the morning was the hour.” 

As for Malcolm, perhaps it was the face that called 
to him from the great elm; the face that only once,— 
when he swung on Peter Brudidge,—had escaped him 
since she flung up her hand in greeting. Perhaps it 
was her face that changed his speech that night, for no 
words that he had planned to speak came from his 
lips. His message became the incarnation of his life. 

“Comrades,” the great voice boomed, “‘there is only 
one word greater than justice and right, and that word 
is duty. There is only one thing more important to me 
than what I own, and that is what I owe.’ There 
were thousands in that babel of tongues who caught no 
meaning from the words, but even they were captured 
by an all-infolding sense of truth that seemed to come 
upon the place. Others as they heard and understood 
were lifted into a new consciousness of self, into a new 
conception of power, and all, as just a moment before 
they had been one in elemental passion, were now, for 
the moment, one in the mind of peace. Upon them 
the inspired speaker wrought his will. He reiterated 
the great declaration of his morning decision; he re- 
viewed his own covenant and renewed in the presence 
of those who bore in their bodies the marks of the 


THE FURNACE 267 


battle with steel the vow of his consecration to the 
cause of the rights of man. 

But then, as from some chamber of his soul never 
before unbarred, he sent forth the voice of his faith: 
“T am here to-night, not because of any right of mine, 
but because of what I owe to you, to my country, and 
to my God. Men,” he cried, “‘all is lost if we go out 
from these grounds, down to the mills that have de- 
feated us, cherishing our wrongs and remembering only 
the injustice that power has fastened for the time being 
more firmly upon us. All is lost, I say, for we have lost 
our way, lost ourselves. This is the lesson poor and 
rich alike must learn—not a man’s right, but a man’s 
duty, and not a corporation’s prerogative of power, just 
or unjust, but a corporation’s obligation to society.’ 

Now the speaker’s voice softened without falling. 
His eyes, to one who searched them deeply, became in- 
trospective, and his face exalted. ‘“Together,” he went 
on, “we must save America for her mission; together 
we must pay the price of her greatness,—pay in faith 
and love and loyalty; pay in service and in sacrifice; 
pay as Lincoln paid, and as those of whom he spoke,— 
pay with ‘the last full measure of devotion.’ 

“What matters now this strike? What matter our 
losses and our hurts? They only win who pay. Those 
who presently will send out to the world word of their 
fancied triumph have not paid. Men and women, our 
war has just begun.”’ 

From that hill of homes the multitude went down in 
murmuring awe as in another time men descended from 
a Mount from which they had looked into the face of 
another world. 


= 


CHAPTER XXV 


VA anaes the memorable meeting on the grounds of 
James Judson broke up, Malcolm Frank shook 
off a score of hands that sought to detain him and 
hurried down the steps. Almost brusquely he turned 
aside the eager people who crowded forward to greet 
him. His eyes were fixed upon the great elm against 
which Gene Stanton leaned, and with fear,—the fear 
of old disappointments in his heart,—the fear that once 
again he would lose her, he pushed forward. 

But Gene Stanton did not move from her place be- 
neath the protecting tree, and as he came now into the 
circle old friends had formed about her, he knew that 
at last she had waited for him. Like a snow queen she 
was; her form lost among the furs that seemed, as did 
everything she wore, to caress her. There had been no 
opportunity to change to the garments of her service, 
and now her radiant face was set in all the richness of 
her station. 

As he came, she turned full upon him, and again, 
impetuously, threw up her hand in greeting. “Mal- 
colm,” she cried, “I am glad!’—and at that all words 
left him. He lost the consciousness of time and peo- 
ple. As he took her hand within his two, he only knew 
that she had called him Malcolm. 

How long they would have stood together there can- 
not be told. In happier times, beyond great tragedies, 


he would remember that night as the morning of his 
258 


THE FURNACE 259 


“day.” He would recall her voice upon his name as 
her love’s first avowal. But even as he felt her nearer 
presence, and in the spell of her acknowledgment would 
have drawn her to him, a hand was laid upon his shoul- 
der, and the voice of James Judson called him to atten- 
tion. 

“Colonel Frank, I am sorry, but the men are wait- 
ing. The major here will run Miss Stanton down 
while we finish up this business.’’ The words were 
simple enough, but they were more than words; they 
held a note of warning and command. Malcolm felt 
the hand within his lose its tenseness, withdraw its re- 
sponse. 

Instinctively he met her new mood, and released her, 
but as he did so he caught a light, half of defiance and 
half of fear, in the glance she flashed at the superin- 
tendent, and even in his regret he felt exultation. Now, 
strong in his knowledge, he leaned toward her and 
once again unconscious of the tides about him whis- 
pered, “Gene, I love you,’—and she smiled. 

It was a wondrous smile. The chill of the frost was 
on the ground, the lights had flickered low, and the 
long shadows had grown dense beneath the tree; but 
when she smiled the darkness was illumined. 

Only one word the girl whispered in reply,—‘To- 
morrow.” Then she turned away with Brant. Mal- 
colm watched as without a backward glance she disap- 
peared along the drive. Only then did he give atten- 
tion to his old friend: 

“Superintendent,” he said to the gray man who stood 
quietly, almost ominously, by, “‘we will finish the busi- 
ness with the men now.” There was no reply, and he 


260 THE FURNACE 


went on, “I don’t know what you know—but that 
doesn’t worry me now—it doesn’t matter—now that 
I know what I know!” Still there was no reply un- 
less a quick intaking of breath by the older man might 
have been a sign of regret. 

Nothing more passed between the two friends that 
night. They spent nearly an hour with their new as- 
sociates, met several newspaper men and then with their 
customary salutations retired,—James Judson to re- 
main lone awake while he pondered a problem deeper 
than strikes, and Malcolm Frank to fall asleep at last 
with a woman’s “To-morrow” ringing softly in his 
ears, 

The morning meal in the Judson dining room was a 
hurried one. The two men seemed by mutual agree- 
ment to avoid discussion of the events of the preceding 
day and evening. The superintendent had greeted his 
young associate with a quietly spoken commendation: 
“You were in great form last night,” he said. “You 
saved the old house from riot and murder and made a 
speech worthy of the occasion.” 

Malcolm’s answer was quite as generous, “But for 
you,” he replied, “there would have been nothing more 
than the announcement of another man fired in the 
papers this morning. As it is,’ and he turned the daily 
with its front page, flaming, spread, toward his friend, 
“the city is shaken, and I believe the country will be 
moved.” 

But as the two men faced each other across the great 
table, each knew that the thoughts of the other were 
not of the strike and the momentous changes that had 
come so quickly. When they rose James Judson looked, 


THE FURNACE 261 


with an unspoken question, at Malcolm. The younger 
man met the eyes of his benefactor, who, he knew, 
had never been more his friend than he was now, with 
eyes that evaded nothing, and he answered: 

“T’ll not ride down. Don’t wait for me. I'll be 
stopping at the Y.W.C.A., and I may not be in for 
lunch. I’m expecting Chaplain Jayne before ten, and 
will meet you both at the store. I haven’t seen Major 
Brant this morning, but am leaving word for him to 
join us all later,’ and then as though he would take the 
superintendent into his innermost confidence, he con- 
cluded : 

“Don’t be anxious about—us. I know what you 
want to say, but don’t say it. There must be a way 
through everything and—we will find it.” Those last 
words were spoken with so deep a conviction that James 
Judson, even as he felt the weight of foreboding and 
anxiety increase within his soul, was reassured by them. 
He made no direct reply, but as he slipped into the ulster 
his friend held for him he remarked, “I'll be waiting 
for you at ten then,’’—and so they separated, but for 
a longer time than had been spoken, 

Five minutes later Malcolm Frank swung down the 
long drive with the stride of a conqueror. Once again 
he felt himself a free man. The restraints of troubled 
months were thrown off. The doubts and misgivings 
that had so grown in the immediate past were left be- 
hind, and with a mind set to the edge of the crisp air, 
he thought with eager tenderness of the moment of 
meeting toward which he hurried. 

He was no dissembler,—far from it. He was at 
times almost hopelessly, pathetically, transparent. He 


262 THE FURNACE 


realized this now as he recalled how from that first 
day in the office James Judson had anticipated his heart, 
and how both the chaplain and major had known im- 
mediately how deep was his “‘wound.” But he only 
smiled, and with keen satisfaction as he remembered, 
—a satisfaction that grew immeasurably as he recalled 
the words of Gene Stanton and the glory of the ac- 
knowledgment in which she had spoken them by the 
old elm only a few hours before. What mattered the 
secret that James Judson shared with President Bran- 
son? What mattered anything? And in this mood 
he came to the door that had become to him more than 
the entrance to an institution. 

In response to his request for Miss Stanton the girl 
at the dask handed him a sealed note, which, with a 
rush of misgivings, he tore open, only to experience a 
great reassurance. 

“Malcolm,” the note began,—and how he reveled 
in his own name as he saw it there, “I will be waiting 
for you at the Shuskis——-where you used to live and 
where once we went, together,—oh, so long ago! 
Somehow I feel that this is the one and only place for 
us to meet to-day. Last night a wild plan came to me, 
and I almost caught that early morning train for the 
green hills and your shining walls. I thought that to 
wait for you there above the town where you left me 
on that Sunday afternoon would be most wonderful, 
but then I remembered that a soldier, even a colonel, 
should never leave an action until it is finished,—and 
besides I found that the next train wouldn’t bring you 
to Jonesville until evening!” 

How he drank in the words, and all that he felt, un- 


THE FURNACE 263 


spoken, behind them, rejoicing as he did so, that not 
even for his “shining walls” had she postponed their 
meeting. Then in a flash he gathered up the last sen- 
tence and hurried to the street. ‘Don’t hurry, if there 
is work*to do, but it has been so long since last night. 
Gene.” Thus concluded the first love letter Malcolm 
Frank had ever received. 

Perhaps it was a half mile from the lodgings of 
Gene Stanton to the home of the Shuskis,—a half mile 
that the young Finn traveled as a man under peremp- 
tory orders. 

When he swung into the familiar alley-like street, 
for the first time since he saw his name on that damask 
page he became conscious of his surroundings. Then 
it was that a frenzied cry called him back to realities. 
Out of a gate, the broken gate through which he used 
to pass daily, came a woman, disheveled and frantic— 
the widow of “Deeds” Shuski—came, wringing her 
hands and screaming. Only one name Frank heard,— 
then he went deaf and blind. 

The frightened eyes that turned upon that portion 
of the street when those first shrieks pierced the quiet 
of the morning, saw a man, with one prodigious leap, 
clear fence and porch, and as the floor of the latter 
crashed beneath him, hurl himself, as though propelled 
by the muscles of a lion, through the door that had 
swung wide behind the frantic woman. 

“Brudidge!’ the mother of “Deeds” Shuski’s chil- 
dren had cried as she staggered forth from some hor- 
ror, and “Brudidge’”’ it was that sent Frank from 
Heaven to Hell as, led by mad instinct, he plunged up 
the dark stairs. The locked door in front of him was 


264 THE FURNACE 


less than a challenge,—he hurled it from his shoulders 
and crashed over the threshold. | 

Out of the far corner came the “Black Killer” ; from 
behind him there was no sound, but as the fiend came 
on the vengeance in front of him, that had been a man, 
took account of baffled fury, thwarted lust, and then 
engaged to keep a rendezvous with death. 

The giants met like mighty brutes in that first rush, 
—met, battered, and swayed. Matched they were,— 
matched like jungle apes, like primordial bulls. No 
word was spoken—the struggle was a silent madness. 
Brudidge gave ground first, but only to find an advan- 
tage. Swinging free from the other’s hold, he leaped 
backward upon the burning stove, caught it up in his 
dripping hands and hurled it from his steaming flesh. 
Like the bolt of a Hercules it crashed down upon 
Frank who, only half evading it, came on through 
smoke and fire to bloody grips again. 

And now for the challenger a new element entered 
into the conflict—the horror of the flames. He must 
destroy,—destroy the foul thing in front of him, but 
he must save her. There had been time before; now 
there was no time; now eternity was a second. He 
staggered back as though overcome. Brudidge lunged 
forward, leered and lunged, but as he lunged his half- 
closed eyes saw life for the last time. 

His chin met the pneumatic drive of the Finn’s 
mighty hammer,—great knuckles mashed against a 
splintering jaw. The “Black Killer’ sagged sideways 
in his fall, and as he came tumbling down remorseless 
arms lifted him, mangled hands swung him against the 
jamb of the doorway, bent him backwards, twisted him, 


THE FURNACE 265 


buckled him until there came from somewhere a sound 
that was like the crackling of a blazing cedar log or 
the snapping of a seasoned stick. 

And then, with the thing that had been Peter Bru- 
didge on his shoulders, that which had been Malcolm: 
Frank staggered through the burning door opening on 
the roof of the porch,—a crude sleeping place for extra 
boarders it had been. For an instant he stood looking 
down upon the rapidly filling street; men, women and 
children rushing with cries and curses toward the out- 
raged home of the murdered “Deeds” Shuski; then 
he lifted his burden high above his head, and, crying as 
he had cried the night before, “Stand back!” he hurled 
it from him. Crashing through the frail fence in front 
of the narrow yard it came to rest half upon the street 
and half upon the walk. 

But even as he cast the thing from him, the fury 
on the roof turned back through the now flame-cased 
door. Into the far corner he groped his choking way. 
There he gathered up a broken, silent form, wrapped 
his bloody coat about the bruised face, and crawled, 
sobbing and changed, behind the draft that sucked out- 
ward, to the door through which he had entered. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


S the choking, reeling man that had been Malcolm 

reached the top of the stairs Judson and Jayne 

met him; Brant came close behind. They had fought 

their way up through the smoke, and now they caught 

up his precious burden as he fell. Other eager hands 

lifted Malcolm and carried him from the furnace into 
the street. 

“Take care of him,” the old superintendent had cried, 
“take care of him. Don’t leave him,” as he drove away 
with the senseless and apparently lifeless form of Gene 
Stanton in his arms. His call was a cry of utter agony 
to Brant and Jayne. That there was a chance, one 
chance in a thousand, to save Gene the two men knew 
who worked now over Malcolm Frank, and they 
knew, too, that it was for this that James Judson had 
left the side of the one he loved dearer than his own 
life. 

Nor was James Judson too prompt. Scarcely had 
his car disappeared when the constabulary swarmed 
into the street, crowding the already frenzied people 
against the fences, but opening a way for the delayed 
fire equipment which, while it could not save the house 
of the Shuskis, did avert a greater disaster which for 
a time threatened that entire quarter of the city. Only 
the group about Malcolm Frank remained,—only that 
group and the red thing, half in the gutter, which no 
man had touched, 

266 


THE FURNACE 267 


It was Sergeant Johnson who came forward when 
the lines were established. “My God! What does it 
mean?” he questioned, horror growing upon him. 
Jayne and Brant who, arriving early from the city and 
following the surge of the crowd from the store only a’ 
block away, had come upon the scene just in time to 
witness the tragedy on the porch, did not reply. Nor 
was there need. 

Relentlessly the spirit of the young giant commanded 
his body; no hand of mercy reached down to hold his 
eyes,—they opened upon the memory of his desolation, 
and as they opened they looked first upon his empty 
arms. He uttered a throating cry, and, before his 
friends could restrain him, floundered over upon his 
face and to his knees. 

“Judson has her,’ Jayne whispered, as he held the 
anguished man from further violent effort. 

Sergeant Johnson turned to the dead—blankets were 
brought and presently a delivery wagon was requisi- 
tioned. 

Meanwhile Jayne and Brant with other willing assist- 
ants had moved Malcolm into an adjoining house 
where he was given the attention of a physician. His 
condition was pitiable. He was bruised and battered 
almost beyond recognition,—for one moment of agony 
Brant looking up at the terrible sight on the porch had 
not known who was the victor. His face was a great 
open wound, while his body was a welter of burns. 
Not until hours later were they to know that he had 
not suffered fatal internal injuries from the flames, and 
to his grave he would carry the deeper scars of that 
hideous struggle. 


268 ‘THE FURNACE 


But it was less than an hour after the climax of the 
tragedy that the patient insisted upon seeing the Ser- 
geant. “No, I want him now,” he demanded, when he 
was importuned to wait to husband his returning 
strength. “Now, I say,” he persisted. When the 
young officer came into the room his former superior 
was sitting up swathed in bandages and propped 
against the men he had long since come to hold as 
brothers. He greeted quietly the man who had once 
known his magnanimity and forgetfulness, and then he 
said as quietly, “Sergeant, where are your handcuffs?” 

The officer started with surprise, but the handcuffs 
hung conspicuously from his holster, and the quick eyes 
of the former colonel saw them. With just a hint of 
the old military imperiousness as he held out his hands, 
one padded with bandages, he said, “Sergeant, snap 
them on,—I killed him.” 

The silence in the room deepened, became tense, and 
then the distraught officer spoke, ‘Killed what?’ he 
said, and it was not a question. “I didn’t see anything 
dead,’ he continued, “anything that ought to have 
lived. I—” and with what he would have concluded 
will always remain an interesting query in the minds 
of those who were watching his deeply troubled face, 
for even as he was speaking, the doctor who had just 
been in attendance on the former assistant superintend- 
ent returned hurriedly and as one who has no time to 
lose said: 

“Colonel Frank,—I have bad news for you,—news 
you should be protected from, but I have no choice in 
the matter. Your father is here; he has been injured, 
seriously hurt,—he insists upon seeing you.”’ 


THE FURNACE 269 


The medical man spoke rapidly, and the sound of 
paired feet falling heavily came in from the narrow 
hall, and a canvas stretcher appeared at the door. On 
a folded blanket lay a gray head. The face was very 
white, the eyes were closed, and through the half-open 
mouth came the sound of slow and labored breathing. 

Malcolm looked down upon the form that lay on the 
rude frame they placed now close by his bed. For a 
long minute he gave no sign of understanding. Then, 
leaning forward and drawing his friends with him, he 
brushed the white hair far back on the high, seamed 
forehead. Still the aged and now gasping man made 
no movement of consciousness. But a sense of fore- 
boding, an intuition, came to the younger. His eyes 
were suddenly fixed; deep fear flooded them, and with 
a touch of mastery he stroked the pallid face. 

“Father!” he cried. The eyes that had been closed, 
opened—quietly, freely, as from sleep. A smile illu- 
mined the countenance; a deep sigh, as of one who has 
rested, escaped the lips. For a moment the concen- 
tration of pain relaxed, and a voice whispered as 
though from a motive of great happiness, “Malcolm,— 
my son!” 

Long the two men looked upon each other, while the 
younger still caressed the elder with his one free hand. 
Presently the coal miner began to talk. 

“Malcolm,—my son,” he said again, speaking as 
though he loved to linger on the words, and hesitating 
after he had spoken them, as though he would repeat 
them yet again. But he went on, as from an inner urge, 
“T read the papers this morning. I came to tell you I 
am glad,—and proud. I—I—have been hurt,—here.”’ 


270 THE FURNACE 


He raised one hand and it fell upon his chest. He 
writhed with pain and coughed. Blood started in a 
hemorrhage from his mouth. Anxiously the physician 
worked over him, but when the spasm had passed he 
insisted upon speaking, and as a man who has a great 
fear of not being able to finish what he has in mind, he 
went on, but in a voice lower and weaker. 

“Don’t blame the soldier—he was excited—afraid, 
—just a boy; the horse got his head—broke through 
the crowd—I was—in—the way.” Again he tried to 
raise his hand, but failed now altogether, and piteously 
his eyes dropped from Malcolm’s face, whose bandages 
he either did not see or would not question,—dropped 
from the anguished face of his son to his own breast. 

Malcolm caught the feeble gesture, and tenderly 
searched within his father’s garments. Presently he 
brought forth a tiny, faded, cotton flag,—a bit of old 
red, white and blue. The dying man’s eyes lighted and 
strained toward it. Again he smiled as he whispered: 

“You wore it in your blouse when we came through 
Ellis Island, and when—you—rode—upon—my— 
shoulders—through—the—station-gates. For years— 
I have had—it—there—upon—my—heart. Take it— 
back, and wear—it—now,—for me.”’ 

Again he smiled, and then was silent for many min- 
utes. His breathing became yet more labored. The 
group about him scarcely stirred. Malcolm, supported 
by the unfailing arms of Bruce and Haig, leaned closer 
to him. With his unmaimed hand he clasped the broad 
expanse of his father’s brow, or with his palm com- 
forted the now sightless eyes that had again closed. 


THE FURNACE 271 


Once and again sobs shook and wracked his burning 
frame. 

But the end was not yet. The lips of the broken 
miner were moving; he was speaking again. “I—came 
—to—tell—you. I—am—glad—my—son,—and— 
proud,” he repeated with great effort, and once more a 
smile sent shining rivers down the deep furrows of his 
face. Now to all but one he seemed to wander as his 
soul no longer waited for his will, but ran on with 
mingled words of happier times. Malcolm understood 
and bending close above the snow-white head felt him- 
self again a little boy beside a prophet’s knee. 

“There—was—Washington—and Lincolh—and—” 

So died Joseph Frank of the Foreign-Born, 


CHAPTER XXVII 


Beane called the four months following the death 

of Malcolm’s father ‘“‘the dark ages’’; they found 
the young Finn who had destroyed Peter Brudidge be- 
hind prison walls,—charged with murder; they passed 
with only one message from Gene Stanton,—a single 
wire received from James Judson five days after his 
disappearance,—a telegram sent from the city’s Union 
Station to Malcolm, a telegram which could not be 
traced, and which read, “Alive and will surely recover. 
Fear for nothing. Weare with you and will be at your 
side when needed.” 

Those same months saw the end of the United World 
Movement, so far as its world-wide program was con- 
cerned, and all but the final disposition of the report 
of the special investigating commission. They recorded 
the dissolution of a great kingdom vision for a united 
Christendom. Here was the bravest dream since the 
fall of Constantine, and the mightiest gesture of Chris- 
tian unity since Jesus was crucified. Created by world 
needs the war made apparent, it grew at the first in a 
war psychology, but burned out as with the war fever. 
No man, no men, killed it; it died. Why those who 
should have been its friends failed to save it, why they 
watched it perish without giving their lives for it, gen- 
erations yet unborn will question, and great men will 
say, as they look back upon it, “Ah, there was a cause 
worth living and dying for!’ and when they have said 

272 


THE FURNACE 273 


that, the spirits of those who joined themselves to it, 
believed in it, toiled for it, suffered with it, and turned 
broken-hearted away because its dream was denied, 
will have their reward, for then they shall know that the 
United World Movement was a living soul, and that 
death could not destroy it. 

It was the movement’s general secretary, Dr. Searl 
Ballard,—“greatest prophet of modern Christianity” he 
had been called,—who, when one mighty denomination 
after another withdrew vital elements of strength from 
the central body and demanded increasingly its sub- 
serviance to the peculiar programs of the separate 
sects, declared, “‘For the church the war ended too 
soon. She had not yet passed under her rod... . 
With these fundamental principles surrendered to 
achieve a temporary respite from sectarian attack, or to 
placate the threat of denominational withdrawal, I can 
see no hope of success. We may for a time engage in 
many activities, but we shall go forward no longer. 
We will be as those who move mightily up the narrow 
lane of a treadmill.” And then in his confidential 
memorandum to his executive associates he concluded, 
“T feel bound to give you this, my frank judgment. 
Personally I would rather lose a great church to the 
movement than surrender a great principle, but the 
committee has willed otherwise, and I cannot find it in 
my heart to withdraw. I would rather live a year with 
this vision and die with it than live a hundred years 
anywhere else.” 

Only too soon Searl Ballard’s confidential prophecy 
was to be realized; the United World Movement, as the 
church had known it, was to pass; men were to ascribe 


274 THE FURNACE 


to many causes its failure; but no leader was to diag- 
nose its fatal malady more clearly than this man who 
gave to it his all, and, in giving that, gave more than 
any one else. 

But when the books of the movement were finally 
audited, and the last balance was struck, one abiding 
contribution was to remain, a contribution which would 
finally be judged as so great and vital as to justify the 
movement itself, which fell like a dead sun from the 
ecclesiastical sky,—that contribution was the work of 
the Bureau of Bruce Jayne. 

But those months which witnessed the passing of the 
United World Movement did not witness the end of 
the nation-wide upheaval which followed the published 
accounts of the tragic events occurring in Oldsburg on 
the fateful day chronicled in the preceding chapters. 

“In Oldsburg,” we have written, but in one particular 
at least they were not confined to that wildly agitated © 
community, for when the news of the sudden and 
violent end of Brudidge reached the general offices of 
the Bancroft Steel Company, Jasper Branson fell dead 
by his desk. Perhaps it were better to record the full 
truth—these are the details of the unexpected passing 
of the president of the great company: 

For several days, or ever since his stormy conference 
in the Oldsburg offices, the man of iron will had been 
changed. Strangely unlike the old unyielding master 
of men he had been, and when a white-faced secretary | 
in the first horror of the word from the old Judson 
stronghold rushed in to him, he was standing as though 
in deep thought before a faded war poster that hung 
on his door. 


THE FURNACE 275 


“Mr. Branson,” the wild-eyed young man cried, “Mr. 
Branson, Brudidge is dead,—killed by Colonel Frank.” 

The president started at the announcement and 
swung half about; the color surged into his face. 
“What?” he gasped, and then swaying slightly, but 
steadying his great body with a hand dropped heavily 
upon the back of his chair, he asked a strange ques- 
tion,—strange indeed it sounded to the secretary,— 
“Why ?” 

Startled, the youth at first seemed at a loss for words. 
As he hesitated his chief’s face became livid, “Why ?” 
he thundered. 

“T do not know, sir,” the thoroughly frightened 
fellow replied, “but my information is that the colonel 
killed Brudidge and threw him from a burning house 
into the street and then collapsed while carrying out the 
body of a girl,—a special visitor of ours named Gene 
Stanton.” 

As that name came from the subordinate’s lips, 
the form of Jasper Branson stiffened and seemed sud- 
denly to shrivel. His eyes started from their sockets; 
his hand clutched at his collar, ““Gene—Gene Stanton ?”’ 
he gasped incredulously, “My God!—Gene—” and 
horror gripped him with an ague. 

But what he would have said was never finished. 
His words were lost in a throaty gurgle. His limbs 
crumpled under him, and as a giant oak, twisted from 
its foundations by an incredible storm, falls back a life- 
less trunk upon the earth, he collapsed upon the floor of 
the chamber that had been for a generation the throne- 
room of his power. He never spoke again. When 
assistance reached his side, he was quite dead. 


276 THE FURNACE 


As to Malcolm Frank, the case would have been > 
simple enough but for one thing. Even in the city of 
steel his release would have been prompt had it not 
been for the dropping out of sight of two people, James 
Judson and the young woman in defense of whose 
honor the Widow Shuski swore the young Finn de- 
stroyed the company official. As it was, with the strike 
ended, and the organization flushed with victory, arro- 
gant with confirmed power, a strong group insisted 
upon an example being made of the former assistant 
superintendent. 

Publicity channels were filled with inspired stories. — 
Every advantage was taken of the embarrassment faced 
by the defense in the absence of two of its three most 
important witnesses, and a ruthless campaign was 
organized to send Colonel Frank to prison for life. A 
death sentence while ostensibly the goal of the prosecu- 
tion was never considered seriously. 

The story of Mrs. Shuski that Brudidge, under the 
influence of liquor and completely in the control of his 
brutal passions, had followed the young woman into the 
Shuski home, that he had insulted her there, and then 
violently attacked both of the women, who were alone; 
that he had carried the unconscious settlement worker 
up the stairs just as her distracted companion had 
rushed screaming into the street was believed by every 
worker in the city and by every friend of the young 
prisoner. 

But it was found by the District Attorney’s office to 
be full of opportunities, and it lacked vital corrobora- 
tions. 

Through the weeks of suspense and suffering, Mal- 


THE FURNACE 277 


colm waited. Only the one message had come to re- 
lieve his agony of soul. In it he found a reassurance 
that steadied him, Had he known all the details that 
later were not withheld from him, he would have been 
even more miserable than he was. Between the pain . 
of his physical hurts and the deeper wounds of his 
mind, he was often in a state bordering on distraction. 

Strange as it may seem, in his darkest hours the 
death of his father, the memory of those last moments 
and last words, assuaged his grief. He was glad the 
end had come before the knowledge of his own vast 
trouble. His faith, though now and again obscured, 
never failed. He believed that truth would finally have 
her way, and with a kind of prophetic fatalism he held 
himself in hand against the time of his court ordeal. 

Of Gene he thought and dreamed constantly, and, 
thinking of her, came again to the spiritual foundations 
of his boyhood, stood once more firmly upon the high 
resolve of his soul. He knew that he would not fail. 
He knew that they would find each other. 

Bruce Jayne and Haig Brant were never long away, 
and one always stood by. Theirs was the task of meet- 
ing the company propaganda and meet it they did, save 
where the influence of steel controlled arbitrarily the 
organs of publicity. That Chaplain Jayne knew Gene 
Stanton,—knew who she really was,—neither the major 
nor Frank were aware, but immediately on returning 
to New York he made certain inquiries which left him 
no less anxious, but much less uncertain. 

However, not all the time of the two friends could be 
devoted to the personal interests of the colonel, nor 
would he have had it so. Often he said, “Cut me out, 


278 THE FURNACE 


fellows—I’m safe. Keep that report in the open. T’ll 
be more worried about it than about some other things, 
until I know that it is safely through your committee 
and off the presses.” 

That there was some ground for his anxiety both 
Brant and Jayne knew. Never had the work of the 
investigating commission been nearer disaster than it 
was on the morning Bruce returned from the West 
with his report. 

It was forty-eight hours after Malcolm’s catastrophe 
before the chaplain could secure his own consent of 
mind to start for New York, and then only after it had 
been arranged for Brant to remain in the West in- 
definitely. In the meantime the details of the tragedy 
had reached the farthest ears of the United World 
Movement, and the inevitable coupling of the names 
of the director of the Industrial Bureau and the sec- 
retary of the investigating commission with the terrible 
affair had driven the old enemies of the investigation 
into a bitter determination. 

When Bruce reached the Movement’s headquarters 
on the morning of his return, he went at once to Dr. 
Ballard’s private office. None of the staff had arrived, 
but he waited for his chief. The greeting of the two 
men was mutually reassuring. The general secretary 
said quietly, “Jayne, it begins to look as though God is 
keeping us alive to hear your report,” and the chaplain 
smiled as he replied, “Perhaps even God won't be able 
to keep some men alive afterwards.” 

With a smile Dr. Ballard replied, “The executive 
committee meets at nine—we will need you then.” 


THE FURNACE 279 


There was a full attendance at the nine o’clock meet- 
ing. Almost immediately occurred an incident that 
every man present would always remember,—an inci- 
dent the memory of which would remain with those 
who gathered in that soon-to-be-deserted conference | 
room as confirmation of the courage and moral sound- 
ness of the leadership of the Christian Church. 

One of the chief and most persistent objectors to the 
work of the investigating commission arose and said, 
“T move to dismiss the commission investigating the 
steel strike, and to indefinitely postpone the publication 
of its report.” 

As the speaker sat down, David Strong addressed 
the chair. He had come in late; he had not been ex- 
pected. For several days he had not been available for 
even the most important business conferences at his 
own Offices. But during the remarks of the last speaker 
he had slipped quietly into his chair, and now as he 
stood to speak, his appearance caused every man who 
turned his eye upon him to start with surprise. The 
strong face was drawn, hard and set; the eyes were 
those of one who has not slept, but the voice was quite 
natural : 

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I am, as I am sure you are, 
profoundly disturbed by this motion.” 

The speaker went on in the same quiet tone, “I hope 
that this motion will not be seconded, and that nothing 
will be done here to interfere with the work of Doctor 
Justice and his associates. I come to-day to tell you 
that if it seems wise to this executive committee to 
take the action indicated by the gentlemen who made 


280 THE FURNACE 


this motion, then I must resign and publish my reason 
even as IJ shall later surely publish the result of the in- 
vestigations into the steel strike.” 

The speaker paused now, but did not surrender the 
floor, and no man disputed him. But afterward every 
man bore witness that David Strong’s authority as he 
stood there was, for the first time, not the authority of 
his wealth and position; it was moral,—the authority 
that in a supreme crisis makes a Luther or a Von Wink- 
elried, and that stops for neither poverty nor riches, but 
commands both. 

“Mr. Chairman and gentlemen,” he concluded, ‘“‘if 
there is no motion before us,’—and there was none— 
“TI move that a committee of five be appointed by the 
chair, from this body, to receive and consider the ma- 
terial of the commission investigating the steel strike; 
that it report back to us at the earliest possible date; 
and that this report be made on the basis of the facts 
and findings. There is no need for anything further, 
since we have already voted to publish. We do need, 
however, this smaller group to do for us what it is 
manifestly impossible for each member of this body 
to do for himself, within the limits of time that should 
elapse before we open our books to the public,”—and 
this was the only motion considered, the only action 
taken by the executive committee that day. 

The special committee of five was duly named, and 
immediately began its work. The long and exacting 
field and office service for Haig Brant was at an end; 
the labors of the commissioners were practically com- 
pleted, and the fruit of their prodigious activities came 
now into the hands of the five who had been entrusted — 


THE FURNACE 281 


with the delicate task of practically passing, for the 
executive committee of the United Movement, upon the 
whole investigating program. 

The task assigned to the committee of five was so ex- 
acting and so voluminous that instead of days or weeks | 
months passed before it was ready to make its final re- 
port. In the meantime the former executive leaders 
and trustees of the United World Movement, which re- 
mained little more than a name, were becoming more 
and more familiar with the actual circumstances under 
which the strike investigations had been carried on, 
and were quite prepared to deal finally with the matter 
when it came before them. 

As for Chaplain Jayne, when with Haig Brant he 
was not devoting himself to the interests of Malcolm 
Frank, he was spending his time with Doctor Justice, 
and the Doctor it was who first dreamed the dream that 
a few years later sent another Bishop, the youngest 
ever elected in a great church, to the Orient, there to 
become one of the mightiest social and evangelistic 
prophets of his time—but this is far beyond our writ- 
ing, and does not concern our story. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


HE trees were green again and the grass in its 

first velvet when the week of Malcolm Frank’s 
trial arrived. The case had been long in the public eye, 
but interest in it had not waned. The attorneys for the 
defense had mapped out a plan of campaign which de- 
manded a change of venue, exploiting the fact that the 
“city” was hopelessly prejudiced against the defendant, 
and that the record of that portion of the state in the 
abridgment of civil liberties was conclusive proof that 
Colonel Frank could not be given a fair trial in its 
atmosphere and environment. 

But to this proposal the defendant refused to con- 
sent. His attorneys were stunned. They used every 
persuasion and argument in their ample repertoire, but 
he remained adamant. “No,” was his final answer, 
“if I can’t be cleared here, I won’t be cleared any- 
where.” 

It was not until the state revealed its hand in the 
opening statement that the seriousness of the situation 
became apparent even to Frank’s counsel—as for his 
friends they were thrown almost into a panic. ‘We 
will show,” the prosecution declared, “that there was a 
feud of long standing between the murdered man and 
the defendant. That there had been constant differ- 
ences and several previous physical encounters between 
them. That only a few hours before the tragedy Mr. 


Brudidge had replaced the prisoner in the offices of the 
282 


THE FURNACE 283 


Oldsburg mills. We will show that there were causes 
for others to have the most malignant feelings against 
the murdered man” (an intimation of the effort that 
would be made to impeach or discount the testimony of 
the widow of “‘Deed’”’ Shuski) “and we will also present 
reasons for the disappearance of certain principals, be- 
yond any that thus far have been revealed.” 

And in the five days that followed a net was drawn 
about the man who sat with the pallor of his confine- 
ment and the agony of his suspense, in the prisoner’s 
dock, that gave the distinguished attorneys who labored 
to free him grave and growing concern. 

The facts that passed unchallenged for the defense, 
though not uninterpreted by the prosecution, were the 
screaming exit of Mrs. Shuski, the entrance of Mal- 
colm Frank, the hurling of the body of Peter Brudidge 
from the roof, the fire, the carrying away of the young 
girl by James Judson. But under the skillful hands 
of the prosecutor these very facts were made to but- 
tress sinister deductions. Mrs. Shuski in her cross- 
examination became confused, and though she never 
wavered in her story and told it with a naked honesty 
that swept the court with conviction, under the lash of 
her tormentors she cried out the agony of her own 
erief and declared in utter abandon that she hated 
Brudidge as the murderer of her husband, nor was she 
loath to confess the benefactions that had come from 
the hands of the defendant. ‘‘We would have starved, 
but for him,” she wept. 

The testimony of both the chaplain and the major 
was impressive, but inadequate. They had seen only 
what others had seen, save for the incident at the head 


284 THE FURNACE 


of the burning stairs, and Sergeant Johnson it was who 
established the fact of the killing by words of the 
prisoner’s own mouth. Reluctantly he told the story of 
the scene by Malcolm’s bed, immediately after the 
tragedy. The statement of the young officer had ample 
corroboration. “But for that,’ the attorneys fumed, 
“there would be an open question as to how Brudidge 
died—he was thrown from a burning building, and 
the only witness to what happened within the place is 
the defendant,—but, ye gods, if his testimony helps us 
as much as his previous statements, he will be both 
electrocuted and hanged.”’ 

“Where are Judson and the girl?” again and again 
thundered the prosecution. “Why are they not here?” 
and there was no answer. But often Bruce Jayne 
turned to the door expectantly, fearfully, and like a 
man released from some curse he felt himself when 
his own cross-examination had been completed without 
those questions having been asked him. But as for 
securing answers to their questions, the prosecution 
seemed quite willing to go without the information, and 
only concerned to keep before the jury the suspicions 
that the questions conveyed. 

The day on which the prisoner was called to the stand 
was one never to be forgotten. It will remain to mark 
a sort of epoch in the history of the criminal courts of a 
state, for the defendant deliberately gave testimony 
which under the circumstances and under the law 
seemed to convict him. Gave it with his own counsel 
fighting like mad to keep it out of the record. Gave it 
with the judge sitting by in open-mouthed astonish- 
ment, and the jury leaning forward spellbound, while 


THE FURNACE 285 


the attorneys for the state remained silent lest they 
weaken their own case. 

Quietly Malcolm Frank told his story; told it to the 
last detail; told it so vividly that those who heard 
seemed to live through that flaming battle themselves. | 
A juryman fainted when the prisoner described the 
crash of the burning stove, and fainted again when he 
heard him say, in answer to a question, “Yes, I went 
up those stairs and into that room to destroy Peter 
Brudidge; I did not know what I would find,” he shud- 
dered, ‘but somehow,” he continued, “I knew that I 
would not find the worst; I knew that I would not be 
too late, but I knew,” and a terrible conviction was in 
the speaker’s words, “I knew that I would destroy 
Peter Brudidge.” 

When the defendant finished his direct testimony 
he was a free man so far as the jury was considered, 
but he had laid foundations upon which the prosecu- 
tion would presently turn against him a tide, that only 
Providence could overcome. 

The cross-examination was appalling; an ordeal that 
made the prisoner again a frenzied destroyer, for it re- 
vealed the foul slander that had been planned against 
the woman he loved. “You went to kill Peter Bru- 
didge?”’ was the first question of the prosecutor. “I 
went to destroy Peter Brudidge,—so help me God,” 
responded Malcolm Frank with startling confirmation. 

The next question was as the setting off of a mine 
under the inner defenses of a citadel. “Did you ever 
make a railway trip into another state with the woman 
in this case, with Gene Stanton?” the prosecutor asked 
in a voice of sinister quietness. The three hours 


286 THE FURNACE 


following that were a bedlam and a fury. Through 
them the man on the witness stand was more nearly 
master of himself than any of the others who joined 
with him or against him in the infuriated struggle, a 
struggle which to him was no longer a struggle for his 
life, but which had become a battle for the honor of 
the woman he loved. Again and again he felt the pas- 
sions of the caged animal as he saw the fiendish sug- 
_ gestiveness of the theory developed by the state. 
Again and again he felt the futile, thwarted fury of one 
who watches in helplessness the treasures of his soul 
dragged through shame. 

His own townsmen, the frightened friends of his 
boyhood, were made to offer testimony that must count 
heavily against him. Every fact marshaled by his 
defenders, and clean, brave facts they were, must first 
be strained through the dirty sieve of that foul ques- 
tion, nor could the attorneys who sought to save their 
client,—save him from worse than death or life im- 
prisonment,—break down the far-reaching and cumula- 
tive impression made upon the minds of the jury by 
the plausibly drawn and impressively supported theory 
of the state. 

Nothing short of acquittal could ever save Malcolm 
Frank,—not even the prosecuting attorney expected the 
death penalty, nor even life imprisonment, but that the 
jury, this first jury, would disagree, and that when 
finally the case had gone the way of all such cases, the 
defendant would be stripped of every vestige of his 
former high standing and moral distinction,—seemed 
assured. For this, in the name of the law, and in the 
atmosphere of the city; for the pride of professional 


THE FURNACE 287 


distinction, and in the absence of an unknown woman, 
the prosecution battled with all the trappings and mental 
equipment of skilled debate. 

Nor was the great organization unmindful of the im- 
plications and opportunities of the case, now hurrying. 
into its concluding phases. The mills beneath the 
towering stacks were not busier than the machinery of 
the great offices that sent forth the implications of the 
former great hero’s double living and undoing. 

It was the last question of the cross-examination that 
sent Bruce Jayne in a rush for the door,—a mad rush 
that seemed to be the final surrender of one of the de- 
fendant’s staunchest friends. But though surrender it 
was, quite of another sort it was than appearances in- 
dicated. 

The prosecuting attorney had stepped close to the 
prisoner in asking his final questions. They were these: 
—‘“Do you believe the woman, Gene Stanton, to be 
alive?” The answer had been “Yes.” “Do you know 
where she is?” The answer had been “No,” and then, 
barked out with all the sinister cruelty of that other 
question, came these words, “Do you believe that the 
name Gene Stanton is the real name of the woman you 
carried from the Shuski house?” 

It was then that Malcolm Frank found relief. Out 
of the mental and spiritual torture of his Calvary he 
rose like some veritable god of faith. Leaping to his 
feet, he cried, “I believe in Gene Stanton as I believe in 
my mother. Finish this business,—I’m done.” 

When Bruce Jayne rejoined Haig Brant that night, 
he was a deeply agitated man. ‘Where have you 
been?’ the major fairly shouted, as he came into the 


288 THE FURNACE 


room the two occupied together, and the chaplain re- 
plied dully, “To the end of the world,—and I’m still 
there.’ After a long interval of silence he concluded, 
“T’ve been trying to do the only thing that can save 
Malcolm from a public stigma that will be to him im- 
measurably worse than death,—and I seem to have 
failed.”’ He bowed his head in his hands. Brant 
waited for the words he knew would follow, and pres- 
ently Bruce finished, “After to-morrow I must tell you 
something you did not know I knew,—just now I can’t; 
it doesn’t matter. But, Haig,’ and the bowed man 
lifted to his friend a grief-stricken face, “there is one 
person who suffers worse than Malcolm Frank to- 
night,—Gene Stanton.’”’ Brant never knew why he 
did not demand the chaplain’s secret then. He could 
never understand what kept him from claiming immedi- 
ately his friend’s confidence,—perhaps both men were 
too mentally and physically spent to do the normal 
thing. 

The next day was given over to the argument. For 
hours the trained and impassioned eloquence of great 
counselors was trained upon the vital elements and cen- 
tral figures of the now famous case. The defense de- 
manded and fought for acquittal,—acquittal full, imme- 
diate, absolute, was the irreducible minimum, the least 
with which it could be satisfied. ‘To win less was to lose 
all. The prosecution fought in reality for anything 
short of a vindication, though ostensibly the attorneys 
for the state were determined for a verdict of guilty 
and a sentence. | 

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. The argu- 
ments had been concluded. The crowded court-room 


vO 


THE FURNACE 289 


waited breathlessly for a sign from the venerable 
judge. It was the hour for the charge to the jury,— 
or would there be a postponement until morning? 
Bruce Jayne had sat with his eyes shifting back and 
forth between the defendant and the door,—the door. 
through which their hope must come if hope there was. 

Let his hurried exit of the preceding day be ex- 
plained. He had gone to Blackstone, a city thirty miles 
away and called a number in New York. After nerve- 
wracking delays he had gotten his party on the ’phone. 
In reply to his frantic appeal, ‘“They must come; she 
must come,—come to-night,—or all is lost,” he had re- 
ceived an answer, the answer of a woman’s anguished 
voice and breaking heart. “Chaplain, she is not here. 
Now I must tell you,—she has never been able to come. 
You must know that she would be with him were it 
possible. Believe me—” and a long sob strangled the 
words on the wire, whatever they may have been. 

Then it was that hope came near. to dying in the 
chaplain’s breast, but yet he watched that door. It was 
three o’clock, we have written, and the arguments were 
finished. The judge had settled back with his familiar 
gesture of weariness and was turning to the great clock, 
which ticked off the minutes of life and death just 
above his head, when the door opened, the door upon 
which Bruce Jayne’s eyes had been set, the door against 
which his faith had battered,—the door opened, and 
James Judson stepped into the chamber. 

Quietly and unhindered he came directly to the coun- 
sel for the defense. No other hand than that of death 
would have stopped him, for breathless, helpless in their 
first surprise, the court, the jurymen, the attorneys, the 


200) THE FURNACE 


witnesses and spectators sat. A whispered word or two 
passed between James Judson and the defendant’s coun- 
sel, and then the senior member of the staff arose and 
addressed the court: 

“Your Honor,” he said, in a voice that trembled so 
that it was with difficulty he spoke at all, “I crave your 
indulgence for just a moment.” The venerable jurist 
nodded his head. The whispered conference went on, 
and then when it seemed that the suspense would precip- 
itate another crisis, or that the prosecution would score 
another point at law, the old attorney stood again and 
with a great light in his eye addressed the court: “Your 
Honor, in the interests of justice, to receive new evi- 
dence directly involving the life of the defendant, and 
to hear witnesses who could not be produced’—and 
impressively he added—‘“who could not because of 
physical disability appear before this time, I ask that 
this case be reopened.” : 

The prosecutor was on his feet now; his face was 
livid. “I demand an explanation,” he cried, but with- 
out losing the new composure that had come upon him, 
the counsel for the defense answered, “Your Honor, 
we are asking for that privilege, and, sir, I pledge you 
my reputation, my honor, that this court will be neither 
delayed nor deceived.” 

The judge answered deliberately, ‘In the interests of 
justice, then, on the word of the eminent counsel,” 
and for just a fraction of a second the court looked 
in the direction of the prosecuting attorney, “with no 
objection from the state the case is reopened to hear 
important witnesses who by no fault of their own were 
not able to appear before this hour. And,’ he added, 


THE FURNACE 291 


“they will of course be subject to cross-examination.”’ 

As the chamber settled down, sank from its latest 
emotional summit to the level of listening attention, the 
counsel for defense announced, ‘‘Call James Judson to 
the stand.”’ The story James Judson told was brief, . 
but illuminating, nor did the prosecution seem inter- 
ested in cross-examining him. 

“TI drove with the unconscious girl to the home of 
President Jasper Branson,’ was the answer the former 
superintendent gave to the first question addressed to 
him, and in reply to the query which immediately fol- 
lowed, he said, “‘She has been there with the late Presi- 
dent Branson’s sisters ever since.” 

Men and women looked now upon that scene within 
the bar of the gray old court room as they might have 
looked had their eyes been turned upon another world. 
But to one man, Malcolm Frank, the picture was part 
of something that lies beyond death. Only a few more 
questions were asked the former company official, and 
only a few additional words were spoken by the witness. 
He stated that almost simultaneously with the injuries 
and terror of her experiences at the hands of Peter 
Brudidge, Gene Stanton had suffered a well-nigh fatal 
attack of brain-fever; that she was still desperately 
weak ; that her condition was such that for her to appear 
in court was to run a grave risk, that his own seclusion 
was made necessary by the life and death interests of 
the young woman, but that she had determined upon 
her course; that her physicians found her in such a 
state that they had advised compliance with her request 
as the lesser of two grave dangers, and that she was 
now in an adjoining room ready to be called. 


292 THE FURNACE 


“But,” concluded the witness, as he begged the len- 
iency of the court, “will not Your Honor and the prose- 
cuting attorney in consideration of all the circum- 
stances, the possible tragedy that may result, allow the 
young woman’s father to speak for her in so far as that 
is possible ?”’ 

Before either the court or the attorneys for the prose- 
cution could make a sign, a call of anguish came from 
the man in the prisoners’ dock. ‘Tears were streaming 
from his eyes that until now had been dry. “For the 
pity of God, stop!’ he cried, but it was the voice of 
James Judson that answered him, and again no hand 
was raised to stop him, “For the hope of God, Mal- 
colm, she must go on.”’ 

And then she came. Like some spirit but lightly held 
in a body frail with suffering, she lay upon the 
stretcher the attendants bore carefully from the judge’s 
private chamber. Her eyes were closed. Her face was 
slightly flushed,—the first faint promise of the life that 
was returning, the promise strong men wept to see so 
soon, so cruelly, challenged. At the head of the 
stretcher walked, with head lifted and gaze fixed, a 
man who was a stranger to all but a few in that crowded 
chamber, but the few who recognized him, had they 
been speaking, would have been stricken dumb with 
their surprise. The man who stood now by his daugh- 
ter’s dark head, caressing tenderly her wasted cheeks, 
was David Strong. 

Bruce Jayne, who knew, was only glad. Haig Brant, 
who had never had the slightest suspicion of the rela- 
tionship between David Strong and the young woman 
who was called Gene Stanton, was as one in a stupor, 


- THE FURNACE 203 


while Malcolm Frank, who knew nothing beyond the 
appalling fact that the woman he loved, with her father 
by her side, was lying there to hold up the flickering 
candle of her life that the way of his release might be 
made plain, plumbed at once the depths of peace and 
woe. 

But presently he, too, knew all, for in answer to the 
first question of the defense, immediately after the 
witness had been sworn, David Strong, without objec- 
tion from the prosecution, had answered for his daugh- 
ter, “Elizabeth Stanton Strong,’ and added with just 
the suggestion of a break in his voice, “Gene we call 
Hers: 

After that the defendant never turned his eyes from 
her face, and when, now and then, he saw her red lips 
move in his soul he joined her prayer. Thus it was 
that when at last, in confirmation of all her father had 
declared, she opened her eyes and whispered in a voice 
that scarcely reached the jury, “I swear it all,” his heart 
had been comforted, his mind -had been reassured, and 
his faith had been confirmed. 

But when that moment came, the prosecuting at- 
torney was on his feet. “Your Honor,” he said, in a 
voice that shook now as his opponent’s had only half 
an hour before, ‘‘we will not cross-examine; if it were 
possible, and if it were for the best interests of the de- 
fendant, we would move that this case be dismissed. 
As it is, we ask that it be given—if this is your own 
mind—to the jury at once, and, sir,—would that the 
case for the state might be stricken from the records 
and from the memory of men. This other word, and 
I am done,—Your Honor,—we did not know.” 


204 THE FURNACE 


While the jury had its verdict to bring in, and proper 
court procedure could not be denied, the defendant was 
a free man from the time James Judson walked into the 
chamber, and when the voice of Elizabeth Strong, who 
would remain forever Gene Stanton to the man of her 
heart, spoke out the confirmation of what her father 
had testified to, in her stead, he was given back the 
honors and the confidence which the fickle public mind 
had taken from him. 

As he watched the stretcher carried out and knew 
the long weeks with their suspense that must elapse be- 
fore he might even hope to see her face again, his 
courage, so long tested, so sternly tried, almost failed 
him. And only of her he thought,—not of her father, 
nor her station. 

Court had been dismissed at once, even as the witness 
was being removed. The final chapter could not be 
formally written until the next morning, but almost 
immediately after leaving the bench the white-haired 
judge returned to the chamber and said, “Bailiff, bring 
the prisoner to my room.” It was then that Malcolm 
found again that God was good. Gene lay as he had 
seen her last. Her father sat beside her, a doctor and 
a nurse bent above her, but there was reassurance in 
their faces. They seemed to have been relieved of some 
great burden. 

Turning to the bailiff, the judge said, “I am re- 
sponsible for the prisoner; you may retire,” and then, 
as the court official withdrew, he also disappeared. 
David Strong released the transparent hand that clung 
to his and, rising, came forward. His firm lips were 
trembling now, and when at last he spoke, he was no 


THE FURNACE 295 


longer the man of affairs, the captain of industry,— 
he was supremely a man, the man of his home, the 
father of his child. 

“Colonel Frank,” he said, and then, with unwavering 
eyes fixed upon the pallid face of the young giant tower- . 
ing above him, “Malcolm,—I thank God for what you 
saved her from; for what you save her for,—I thank 
God for you.’ Then for the first time their hands 
met. 

Behind them came a faint stirring as of impatience, 
and the younger of the two men, standing there in what 
had been a room of judgment, saw wide eyes of 
wondrous depths and meaning, turned upward to him, 
from what had been so recently a cot, but had so soon 
become a throne. He caught the flicker of a smile; the 
fluttering of her hand that would have made that dear, 
familiar gesture, and as he dropped upon his knees to 
meet her lips, he heard her whisper, ‘“Malcolm,—my 
beloved!” 


CHAPTER XXIX 


UST four weeks to a day after Malcolm Frank’s 

acquittal the executive committee of the United 
World Movement came together formally for the last 
time. Called to consider the report of the special com- 
mittee of five, it met under a cloud of deep sorrow, for 
Thomas Harrington, the man who had written the re- 
port and given direction to the searching and con- 
scientious investigation and study which preceded its 
writing, was not present. Killed suddenly, cut off in 
the prime of his physical and mental maturity, more 
than ordinary significance attached to the reading of 
the words that represented the last work of his broad 
mind and searching pen. 

While there had been no opportunity to anticipate in 
any way the findings of Dr. Harrington and his fellow 
members, the conclusion, “We recommend the adop- 
tion of this report and that immediately publicity be 
given to it in all parts,’ was not unexpected, for the 
trustees of the United World Movement were practi- 
cally unanimous in the conviction expressed by Dr. 
Harrington’s document. 

“The normal presumption in a case of this sort, with 
a commission of such personnel as has conducted this 
investigation and prepared this document, would be 
that the conclusions are entitled to full confidence, and 
that they will constitute a valuable contribution to the 
solution of the problems involved.” And the sentence 


296 


THE FURNACE 207 


immediately following this, coming now almost as the 
judgment of another world, meant much to Doctor 
Justice and his associates: “It is your special com- 
mittee’s judgment that this presumption is amply con- 

firmed by the character of the report.” | 

The concluding sentences were an unequivocal en- 
dorsement of the investigators’ findings and read, 
“Taken as a whole this voluminous report consti- 
tutes a serious indictment of a great corporation and 
of public authorities in many places. ... So far as 
your committee of five can see, such impressions corre- 
spond wholly to the facts discovered. Also your com- 
mittee feels that however distasteful may be the duty 
of pointing out what appears to be a grievous wrong, 
we have no option in the matter. The Church has, not 
only the privilege, but the duty of witnessing against 
injustice no matter by whom it may be done.” 

After the reading of the words that the now silent 
pen had written, Doctor Justice was introduced and 
presented briefly the major findings and the principal 
recommendations of his commission. Said he: 

“We are bound by the facts to declare that the 
strikers had grievances, grievances unredressed and 
under the system of control unredressable. 

“We are bound by the facts to declare that arbitrary 
control on the part of the corporation affected the 
workers, not only as employees of the company, but as 
citizens and social institutions in the communities. 

“We are bound by the facts to declare that the length 
of the working day, the arrangement of the shifts, the 
unequal and unjust distribution of wages, the opera- 
tions of the undercover and spy systems, defeated 


298 THE FURNACE 


Americanization and created a situation not good for 
the nation. 

“We are bound by the facts to declare the abridg- 
ment and cutting off of civil liberties, and that a reign 
of fear was created at the expense of justice and funda- 
mental democracy. 

“We are bound by the facts to declare the silence or 
partisanship of great sections of the daily press with 
the perversion of facts in the interests of one of the 
two strike principals, and 

“The silence or partisanship of a majority of the 
churches and religious leaders in the central strike area. 

“And, finally, we are bound by the facts to declare 
with grave forebodings that the end of the strike has 
been the beginning of yet more sinister trouble for the 
country.” 

“What a tragedy, gentlemen,” the Doctor added to 
his final statement of conclusions, before proceeding to 
the recommendations of his report,—“What a tragedy, 
that this mighty industry not, only has refused the hand 
of mediation, but that for all this chaos of bitterness it 
has no other alternative than absolutism, no other plan 
than arbitrary control; and, gentlemen, what a tragic 
pity that for the statesmanlike efforts of its own associ- 
ates who seek a better way, who experiment, even as I 
speak, with the shop committee, it has only suspicion or 
derision, voiced in language but thinly veiled.” 

There was an uneasy stirring near the door as the 
Doctor spoke those last sentences, and presently a note 
was handed to the chaplain, but the speaker was not in- 
terrupted, and he proceeded at once with the recom- 
mendations of his document: 


THE FURNACE 299 


“We recommend: 

“First, that the Government of the United States 
be requested to initiate immediately an effort to bring 
together both sides to the present unsettled controversy. 

“Second, that the Federal Government by Presi- . 
dential order, or Congressional resolution, set up a com- 
mission representing both sides, and the general public; 
a commission similar to the commission resulting from 
a former coal strike; that this commission consider 
at the earliest possible date the twelve-hour day, the 
seven-day week, the readjustment of wage rates, and 
that it be empowered to evolve an adequate plan of 
permanent free conference. 

“Third, that the Federal Government inaugurate a 
full inquiry into the past and present state of civil 
liberties in the strike area; also the operation of the 
system of espionage and social slavery revealed in this 
investigation.” 

As Doctor Justice sat down Chaplain Jayne arose. 
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have a surprise for you,—a 
happy surprise, I believe you will regard it. Colonel 
Malcolm Frank reached the city last night and came 
with me to the office this morning. He has had no 
warning, but unless there is objection, I will do my best 
to bring him in.” 

And so, a few minutes later, Colonel Frank, still 
bearing the marks of his supreme ordeal, came before 
the distinguished religious leaders. The four weeks 
since his trial had been quiet ones; first he had gone to 
his mother; then with James Judson he had found a 
retreat far back in the Alleghenies. Only one man had 
known his exact whereabouts,—David Strong,—and 


300 THE FURNACE 


while the rest and quiet did much for the weary man, 
the word that came weekly from Gene’s father did 
vastly more. 

As he stood now before the officials of the United 
World Movement, who knew intimately the details of 
his public career, his old self-mastery had fully re- 
turned. He expressed his appreciation for the privi- 
lege of speaking,—even at the disadvantage of its un- 
expectedness, and then said: 

“The workers of America and of the world need this 
report, and because they need it, Christianity needs it. 
That it is true, I know.” There was the depth of un- 
spoken things in his voice. “I think first, I suppose, of 
these people who have never really lived; who as one 
of them said to me months ago, ‘have never seen 
America.’ They need this report and because they 
need it, America needs it,—and every other nation. 

“The conditions in the steel industry, the conditions 
your representatives found and now report, are not 
good for the country—are not good for internation- 
alism. They create distrust and bitterness, and dis- 
trust and bitterness defeat peace,—make for war.” 
The speaker became animated now. “When _ these 
‘hunkies’ and ‘dagoes’ return to their old homes—and 
thousands are going—they will carry evil tidings to 
their people, and the faces they turn backward will 
be faces of hate. My father,’ and the young man’s 
eyes dropped unconsciously to the bit of color on his 
lapel, which had been drawn into a ruffled badge held 
within a metal button, “used to tell me that when 
America was young and weak, she was not afraid; that 
the men who wrote her constitution were men of faith 


THE FURNACE 301 


and not of fear; that while they were setting up their 
own government and taking their first uncertain steps in 
liberty, they opened their shores and hearts to the 
oppressed of all lands. They believed that to save 
America they must serve the world.” 

Now as the speaker concluded the spirit of his ideal- 
ism took on a voice of prophecy. “This vision and 
this courage we must not lose. The report which you 
have here is a brave and truthful declaration of condi- 
tions within us that are the fruits of injustice and fear ; 
conditions that must be remedied if America is to face 
her future as she has met her past. Many will criti- 
cize you for entering a field foreign to your customary 
activities, and charge you with meddling in things that 
are not the business of the church, things the church 
knows nothing about. But this report deals with the 
fundamental principles that first of all affect the bodies 
and souls of men, and of women and children; the 
principles that Jesus lived and taught, the principles 
that He called upon His followers to practice and de- 
clare. A hundred years from now, when your critics 
are forgotten, this report will be remembered, and in 
the end the United World Movement will be judged, 
not by what it failed to do in other things, but by what 
it did in this. 

“And if you will allow one who owes all that he is 
to this country and to the father who brought him to 
it,—the father who taught him to love it,—if you will 
allow him to venture a prophecy, the time will come 
when history will include the statement that the action 
of the religious leaders who accepted the challenge of 
industrial absolutism and, discovering the facts, de- 


302 THE FURNACE 


clared them, saved America from a worse trouble than 
the Civil es and set up the standard of a new in- 
dustrial era.’ 

When he finished, Malcolm Frank turned as though 
to retire, but the voice of David Strong arrested him, 
“Unless there is objection,” said the distinguished 
capitalist, “I wish that the Colonel would remain a few 
minutes longer, until the vote is taken; then we can 
leave together. I assure him and you,” turning to the 
men about the great table, “that I will not be long with 
what I have to say. We,” and again the speaker ad- 
dressed himself to the colonel, ‘‘are keeping others wait- 
ing.” 

A warm flood rushed into the cheeks and swept over 
the face of the young giant as he dropped into a chair. 
The officers and trustees of the United Movement felt 
the surge of fine emotions as they caught the meaning 
of the frank avowal in the words of the father of 
“Gene Stanton,’’—who now went on with what proved 
to be the only speech delivered by any member of that 
body before the final vote was taken, a vote that was 
unanimous. 

“Colonel Frank has said,’’ David Strong began, “that 
we will be misunderstood, criticized—and he is right. 
The very temper of these times indicates that this re- 
port will be attacked as radical, the work of socialists. 
Well, it is radical if we are to measure it by church 
reports of the past. However, if the report itself is 
sound, attacks will only strengthen it; counter-publicity 
will only keep it before the people. 

“Gentlemen, this momentous document will stand, 
not upon what its friends or its enemies say about it, 


THE FURNACE 303 


’ 


but upon what I find here,” and his hand came down 
firmly upon the summary of the report which lay before 
him, and through which he had been leafing during the 
events of the preceding hour. “Upon what I find 
here,” he repeated, and went on in a voice slightly. 
raised : 

“Tf this report falls, it falls of its own weight, and 
not because of any attack that those opposed to it can 
make against it. 

“Gentlemen,” David Strong continued, “whatever 
we of the industry, we who control it, may say about 
“Red radicals’ and uninformed or prejudiced investi- 
gators, these findings as to hours, wages, and arbitrary 
control will give us no peace. They will rise up to 
embarrass us at every turn. They will call for con- 
stant explanations and apologies. They will keep us 
always on the defensive.” 

David Strong grew more and more intense as he 
proceeded, and now, as he spoke, he said, as one who 
takes a vow, “From this hour on everything that I have 
is dedicated to the solution of the. problem this report 
discloses. It is an appalling problem, gentlemen,—I 
know something about it, but I must either accept its 
challenge or step, shame-faced and defeated, out of the 
industry. I have no pet plan and no pet theories that 
I will not sacrifice or change. But I do have some 
very dear and personal reasons for believing that the 
way of justice and goodwill, the way of participation in 
direction and control, as well as in returns, is the way 
out; that if we begin by the Golden Rule instead of the 
iron rule, we will find peace as well as profits.” 

He turned now to Malcolm Frank and, reaching out 


304. THE FURNACE 


his hand, said, “Colonel, I here publicly ask you to 
come with me; to invest your idealism and your 
genius for leadership, along with what I may contribute, 
in the task of solving steel,—not to make money, sir, 
but to help make a better world,—’”’ | 

With kindling eyes Malcolm Frank arose and took 
the outstretched hand. When, five minutes later, the 
vote had been taken—the unanimous vote to adopt the 
report and publish it—every man of that notable com- 
pany came to his feet as David Strong and Malcolm 
Frank left the room together. 


CEU EL in) XR 


cd area last formal session of the executive committee 
of the United World Movement had adjourned. 
The great conference room was almost deserted. Only 
two men remained. One of the two was speaking: 

“Bruce Jayne,” he said, “I don’t care about myself, 
—that is, I don’t care as many of the others must, and 
it rends my soul when I think of what this breaking up 
means to them,—but with me it is different. You 
didn’t know, but when I came on here, the doctors 
called me a fool and dismissed my case. I had deep- 
seated physical troubles. They said, ‘Rest a year now 
or you will be down and out at the end of the year,’ 
and I replied, ‘T’ll take the year now.’ ” 

It was Dr. Ballard who was speaking, “Well, Jayne, 
I’ve had my year, my year with the dream,” his voice 
grew husky, “and whatever else has died, the dream 
is still alive.’ He paused for a long time, and then 
went on, “I’m taking to the open. TIl not see you 
again,—soon. I know a desert where the sun seldom 
fails, and where the air carries healing. Perhaps out 
there I will find something more than bodily health. 
Good-by, old man, God bless you,—and don’t forget the 
dream.” 

General Secretary Ballard turned as he finished, 
gripped the hand of the chaplain, who had been stand- 
ing with him looking down from the great window of 


the now nearly deserted conference chamber upon the 
305 


306 THE FURNACE 


crowded avenue. Then, swinging abruptly about, he 
left the room. 

Now all were gone save one. Jayne felt no inclina- 
tion to withdraw ; he stood where his chief had left him. 
His thoughts were of another springtime, and of an- 
other separation, another broken dream. But there 
was no bitterness in his soul, and he said, half aloud, 
“T have given my life,—I cannot take it back,—I’ll not 
forget.” 

The air swirled up through the ventilator on the 
window-sill and played upon his brow,—played upon 
his brow like the soft ringlets of a woman’s hair. 

Presently Haig Brant came in quietly. He sat 
down upon the old table; waited for a long minute and 
then whistled softly, ‘“Can’t—get—him—up—can’t 
—get— him—up—can’t— get— him—up—at—al-l.” 
Bruce turned about and smiled. ‘Well, old stormer?” 
he questioned,—it was the first time in months that 
he had used that familiar and affectionate saluta- 
tion. 

Haig slid to the floor and came over to the window. 
He slipped his lean arm under that of his friend, and 
both turned again to the busy street. “No one weeping 
down there—over us,” the major said, with a quizzical 
smile. ‘What is it, Padre?—the end of the world, or 
just the beginning?’ and Bruce replied, “The begin- 
ning.” 

Again a long silence, which the major interrupted, 
“T came to tell you I’m taking ‘holy orders’ to-morrow, 
—no, that isn’t it,’ and he left off his half-banter, 
“Bruce, I’m lining up with your bunch to-morrow,— 


THE FURNACE 307 


I’m joining the church.”’ The man addressed started in 
surprise. Spasmodically his arm closed like a vise 
over the arm of his friend and he turned, half-believing, 
only half-believing, eyes upon the speaker. 

“Yes,” continued Brant slowly, as though searching. 
his own heart before going on, “‘and you’re to blame,— 
you and she,” he snapped open his watch, and looked 
steadily in the faded pictured face of his mother, “but, 
Bruce, this is really what I came to tell you, and please 
don’t say anything when I finish,—not now, old man. 
This is what I came to say,—I’m lining up with your 
bunch to-morrow because you came out to me. I never 
would have come in to you. I think that you begin to 
know why. But you went out to me,—went out where 
I was; took me as I was, and, Bruce Jayne, there are 
millions like me, millions as hungry as Jesus found 
them nineteen hundred years ago.” 

Again a long silence before the window, and again 
the major interrupted it. Now his voice had taken 
on a subtle change, but a change so great that, again 
startled, the chaplain turned full upon him, “Bruce, I’ve 
made arrangements for our vacation,—we’re going 
abroad, back to Seicheprey and Gondrecourt, Cantigny 
and Soissons,—back to the graves of Bill Thomas and 
‘Wick’ Sanders,’ he whispered the names softly, and 
Jayne, who had stiffened to make his refusal, hesitated 
and waited, “I’ve made the reservations on the Aqui- 
tania,—not our old accommodations, obviously not,” 
and the speaker smiled as he remembered the palatial 
suite on Deck A, “but the cabin is comfortable. I 
planned for three, but Malcolm is out of the question 


308 THE FURNACE 


now,” and tlie warmth of deep gratitude took hold upon 
the hearts of both men as they thought of him and 
his joy. 

“We will travel down the old lines again,” the 
speaker continued, “hang our feet over the old parapets 
in the great peace and rest our souls. Then we'll come 
back,—back to take up again this ‘trail to the hearts of 
men,’ this trail that I once heard you say ‘rises and 
dips, but remains permanently at no lower level.’ ” 

Again a long silence while Jayne waited and waiting 
thought of Jo and “Sonnie,’—Jo and “Sonnie” the 
neglected, but when again the major spoke, he swept the 
last objection from the mind of his tensely silent audi- 
tor. “But when we return, you'll need another cabin,” 
he continued, ‘‘and so perhaps you'd better take that 
blessed sister of yours along, and the little fellow who 
hasn’t seen too much of his father this last wild year. 
Yes, old man, you'll need another cabin, for Mrs. Brant, 
Mrs. Haig Brant and daughter, will be coming back 
with me.” 

And now Jayne gave it up; stared in frank and wide- 
eyed amazement at the speaker, who smiled without 
even a hint of cynicism as he concluded, “Yes, Mrs. 
Haig Brant—knew it would go hard with you, but 
bear up—pack up your troubles, and don’t forget your 
dust-covered book—the little black book you used to 
baptize the living and bury the dead by. There is one 
page in it I never heard you read from during the war, 
but I’m dead in earnest about hearing you read from 
it in an old German house of Montebaur out from 
Coblenz on the Rhine.” 


THE FURNACE 309 


And now again there was silence that there is no 
reason for us to disturb. 


Out along the north shore of Long Island drove the 
heavy car of David Strong—on by Flushing Bay and 
Douglastown, Little Neck and Manhasset. What 
passed between the two men who sat within will never 
be written, but when the great gate swung shut behind 
them, and the engine caught the challenge of the heavy 
grade of the long drive beneath the elms, the elder of 
the two said, “Malcolm, you will find no questions in 
your welcome here,’ and a few minutes later when 
_ they shot under the canopy that looked out upon Hemp- 
stead Harbor and the Sound, it was a queenly woman 
—a woman the younger man had seen but once before, 
and then at a conference which had brought to him a 
great disappointment—a queenly woman with wet and 
shining eyes who lifted her white hands to his cheeks 
and, gazing long into his face, said, ‘‘Malcolm, I’m glad 
you have come.” 

Half an hour later a tawny-headed, refreshed giant, 
impatient and eager, stepped out upon the wide veranda 
which faces the sea. The Boston boats were passing; 
the gulls hung low over the returning fishing smacks, 
and the path of the setting sun made a way of beaten, 
quivering gold toward the “Gate.” The eyes of the 
man saw neither sun nor gulls nor boats; they searched 
the unfamiliar lawn, the tree-sentineled and flower- 
bordered paths that led away from the great steps at 
his feet. They spoke a heart that would not longer 
be denied. They called for one and only one. 


310 THE FURNACE 


And then a child’s voice in the hush of a child’s first 
embarrassment piped out at his very side, ““Mr. Colonel, 
my sister sent me for her shawl, and said perhaps you’d 
be kind enough to bring it back—here it is.’”’ There was 
just a suggestion in the lad’s tone of a small boy’s per- 
fect willingness to help complete the errand. But a 
deep voice said joyously while a great hand snapped 
into a salute: 

“Very fine, major, point the way and stand ‘post’ 
here until the detail returns.” Then down the path 
a wavering finger indicated, a soldier marched in 
“double-quick.”’ 

Upon a stone bench she sat—a great seat that stood 
alone upon a grassy slope; no trees nor shrubs obscured 
its view or shut it in. And so he saw her first. She 
rose to meet him. 

“O God of goodness,” his heart cried, as her hand 
flung up in that first glad gesture of her love’s avowal 
—then on he came across the sod, his eyes no longer 
saw. Like a knight of old he knelt before her won- 
drous beauty. | 

She filled her hands with his hair, and laughed,— 
laughed with joy unspeakable. Then she bent until her 
lips were on his head, and once again she whispered, 
what he only once before had heard, ‘Malcolm, my be- 
loved.”’ 

An hour later—or was it a century?—a small boy, 
who had been quite unnoticed as he came across the 
lawn, stood before two unabashed young people and 
said, ‘“Mr. Colonel, I waited, but mother said it was 
getting cool for invalids, and sent me down to tell you 
that dinner has been ready for an awful long time.” 


THE FURNACE 311 


And then Malcolm cradled Gene in his arms, held her 
close against his heart, and with her white hands clasped 
behind his neck and the wind blowing her hair across 
his face, bore her, as that which is most precious, back 
to the glowing house. 

And thus they went in together. 


THE END 














SN 
A 


1 
i sh 





+) rf n 
en 


fi} Labia (ee 
AVE ANTONE 


# 


y Riess) 


0 Vo 
FS 


hah bait 
yh wnen 


ae 


OUT ohh at 
Ses 
hh are Ea 








THE BOOK SHOP, | 
215° Fifth Street, N. W. 
CANTON, OHIO. 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 





3 0112 003602270 


